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digger

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary
See also: Digger

English

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English Wikipedia has an article on:
Wikipedia
A digger (#1)

Etymology

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From Middle English dyggar, equivalent to dig +‎ -er.

In the sense of "Australian soldier", attributed to the considerable time that soldiers spent digging trenches during World War I.

Pronunciation

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Noun

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digger (plural diggers)

  1. A large piece of machinery that digs holes or trenches.
    Synonym: excavator
    Hyponyms: backhoe, trackhoe
    • 1952 January, “Electrification Progress in Norway”, in Railway Magazine, page 55:
      The cables are placed from 16 in. to 2 ft. down, and to save time and labour use was made of a mechanical digger lent by the Swedish State Railways.
  2. A tool for digging.
    • 2009, Sharon Bomgaars, The Best Clubhouse Ever‎[1], page 143:
      The post hole digger did look ancient. I was pretty certain myself that it hadn′t dug any holes for a long, long time.
  3. (slang) A spade (playing card).
  4. One who digs.
    • 1997, Barbara J. Wrede, Civilizing Your Puppy‎[2], page 75:
      You′ve tried the supposedly sure method of squirting the digger with water from a hose, and that hasn′t worked. […] This step will discourage 99 percent of the diggers.
    • 2005, Gary R. Sampson, Dick Wolfsie, Dog Dilemmas: Simple Solutions to Everyday Problems, page 130:
      Most retrievers are not inveterate diggers — that′s a trait usually reserved for other breeds like wire-haired terriers and schnauzers.
  5. (Australia, obsolete) A gold miner, one who digs for gold.
    • 1853, Charles Dickens, editor, Household Words‎[3], volume 21, page 64:
      A successful Australian digger — successful, not merely in siftings and washings, but bearing the title, and its best credentials, of a “nuggetter” − came down from Forest Creek recently and took up his abode in a low lodging-house in Little Bourke Street, Melbourne.
    • 1887, Harriet W. Daly, Digging, Squatting, and Pioneering Life in the Northern Territory of South Australia, page 342:
      Proofs of the presence of the white man are found all over the Territory in the shape of old bouilli tins, &c., and often when out after a strayed horse, I have imagined myself to be in wilds untrodden except by the foot of the blackfellow, but the sight of an unassuming empty sardine tin would remind me that the ubiquitous digger had been there first.
  6. (Australia, informal) An Australian soldier.
    • 1998, Helen Gilbert, Sightlines: Race, Gender, and Nation in Contemporary Australian Theatre‎[4], page 191:
      Costume played a key part in his differentiation from British soldiers as the Digger uniform came to embody Australian versions of masculinity and mateship.
    • 2002, Jeff Doyle, Jeffrey Grey, Peter Pierce, Australia's Vietnam War, page xxiii:
      For many, the congruencies of the Anzac legend and the diggers who served in Vietnam were slight, too slight, and the legend seemed unable to accommodate them.
    • 2004, Lisanne Gibson, Joanna Besley, Monumental Queensland: Signposts on a Cultural Landscape, page 99:
      Like many other Queensland communities, the workers from the North Ipswich Railway Workshops chose a statue of a soldier, or digger, to honour their fellow workers.
  7. (Australia, dated, by extension) a friendly term of address, especially to a man.
  8. (US, offensive, ethnic slur, vulgar, slang, dated) A member of any Native American people in the western United States, especially Native Californians.
    • 1974, Robert F. Heizer, editor, They Were Only Diggers: A Collection of Articles from California Newspapers, 1851-1866, on Indian and White Relations, Ramona: Ballena Press, page 99:
      White men are not usually hanged for killing Chinamen, but Indians who commit such a crime are strung up with little ceremony. Last week a Digger was hung at Jackson, Amador county, for having last summer murdered some Chinamen at Rancheria.
    • 1872, Mark Twain, chapter XIX, in Roughing It‎[5], Hartford: American Publishing Company:
      From what we could see and all we could learn, they are very considerably inferior to even the despised Digger Indians of California; inferior to all races of savages on our continent; inferior to even the Terra del Fuegans; inferior to the Hottentots, and actually inferior in some respects to the Kytches of Africa.

Usage notes

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  • The eighth definition could be used in both official and colloquial contexts. In official contexts, it was used as a misnomer for specific Native American tribes, such as, but not limited to, the Shoshone, the Piute, the Goshute, the Bannok, and the Washoe tribes.[1] In addition, "the term Digger was so widely accepted by early [colonial] Californians, used in journals, newspapers, reports of army officers and Indian agents in their report to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs that it came into standard usage."[2] In colloquial contexts, it was used to describe any Native American tribe associated with digging for roots to eat.[3]
  • In the United States, "Digger" has derogatory connotations, suggesting not only white racism but also unfavorable attributes such as a lack of intelligence, inferiority, and contempt. It is associated with genocide and the subordinate social status of American Indians in the United States.[4]

Hyponyms

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Derived terms

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Translations

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References

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  1. ^ Merriam, C. Hart (October 1996), Reports of the University of California Archaeological Survey. No. 68, volume 1, Berkeley: University of California Archeological Research Facility, page 41
  2. ^ Heizer, Robert F., They Were Only Diggers: A Collection of Articles from California Newspapers, 1851-1866, on Indian and White Relations, (Ramona: Ballena Press, 1974), xv.
  3. ^ “digger, n.”, in OED Online Paid subscription required⁠, Oxford: Oxford University Press, September 2025.
  4. ^ Stereotypes of Indigenous peoples of Canada and the United States on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

Further reading

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Anagrams

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Yola

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Etymology

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From Middle English dyggar.

Pronunciation

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Noun

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digger

  1. (figurative) duck
    Synonyms: dig, duucks

References

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  • Jacob Poole (d. 1827) (before 1828), William Barnes, editor, A Glossary, With some Pieces of Verse, of the old Dialect of the English Colony in the Baronies of Forth and Bargy, County of Wexford, Ireland, London: J. Russell Smith, published 1867, page 35
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