Search the Dictionary

-- Grafting tool. (a) Any tool used in grafting. (b) A very strong curved spade used in digging canals. -- Grafting wax, a composition of rosin, beeswax tallow, etc., used in binding up the wounds of newly grafted trees.

round, generally for an object that is difficult to reach or extricate; to be occupied in digging.

A tool chiefly for digging up weeds, and arranging the earth about plants in fields and gardens. It is made of a flat blade of iron or steel having an eye or tang by which it is attached to a wooden handle at an acute angle.

To make hollow, as by digging, cutting, or engraving; to excavate. "Trees rudely hollowed." Dryden.

An implement for digging and grubbing. The head has two long steel blades, one like an adz and the other like a narrow ax or the point of a pickax. 'T is you must dig with mattock and with spade. Shak.

somewhat descriptive accompaniment, while the actor speaks; as, the melodrama in the gravedigging scene of Beethoven's "Fidelio".

To get, as metals, out of the earth by digging. The principal ore mined there is the bituminous cinnabar. Ure.

The act of digging or breaking up, as with a pick.

A sort of crowbar for digging. [Obs.] Mortimer.

The act of digging up again. [Obs.] Bp. Hall.

To subvert by digging or wearing away; to mine; to undermine; to destroy the foundation of. Nor safe their dwellings were, for sapped by floods, Their houses fell upon their household gods. Dryden.

A deep shovel, or any similar implement for digging out and dipping or shoveling up anything; as, a flour scoop; the scoop of a dredging machine.

trument drawn by oxen or horses, used for scraping up earth in making or repairing roads, digging cellars, canals etc.

To use the claws or nails in tearing or in digging; to make scratches. Dull, tame things, . . . that will neither bite nor scratch. Dr. H. More.

To make (a depression) by digging, delving, or cutting, etc.; as, to sink a pit or a well; to sink a die.

An implement for digging or cutting the ground, consisting usually of an oblong and nearly rectangular blade of iron, with a handle like that of a shovel. "With spade and pickax armed." Milton.

One who, or that which, spades; specifically, a digging machine.

The depth to which a spade goes in digging; a spade; a spadeful. [Prov. Eng.] Halliwell.

A sharp, narrow spade, usually with a long handle, used by farmers for digging up large-rooted weeds; a similarly shaped implement used for various purposes. My spud these nettles from the stone can part. Swyft.

grub up by the roots; to extirpate; as, to stub up edible roots. What stubbing, plowing, digging, and harrowing is to a piece of land. Berkley.