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The act or the place of excavating.

ballast of prosperity. Barrow. Ballast engine, a steam engine used in excavating and for digging and raising stones and gravel for ballast. -- Ship in ballast, a ship carring only ballast.

A spade for digging turf. [Prov. Eng.] Wright.

ophaga; the sexton beetle; -- so called from their habit of burying small dead animals by digging away the earth beneath them. The larvæ feed upon decaying flesh, and are useful scavengers. -- To bury the hatchet, to lay aside the instruments of war, and make peace; -- a phrase used in allusion to the custom observed…

ere the bones of the dead are deposited; originally, a place for the bones thrown up when digging new graves in old burial grounds.

One engaged in the business of digging mineral coal or making charcoal, or in transporting or dealing in coal.

the right of fishing in waters belonging to another. -- Common of turbary, the right of digging turf upon the ground of another.

A notch, passage, or channel made by cutting or digging; a furrow; a groove; as, a cut for a railroad. This great cut or ditch Secostris . . . purposed to have made a great deal wider and deeper. Knolles.

To get by digging; as, to dig potatoes, or gold.

A degraded tribe of California Indians; -- so called from their practice of digging roots for food.

A ditch; a channel for water made by digging. Little channels or dikes cut to every bed. Ray.

A trench made in the earth by digging, particularly a trench for draining wet land, for guarding or fencing inclosures, or for preventing an approach to a town or fortress. In the latter sense, it is called also a moat or a fosse.

Digging up.

A digging out or up. [R.] "The effossion of coins." Arbuthnot.

To hollow out; to form cavity or hole in; to make hollow by cutting, scooping, or digging; as, to excavate a ball; to excavate the earth.

The act of excavating, or of making hollow, by cutting, scooping, or digging out a part of a solid mass.

Fitted for, or pertaining to, digging.

Fitted for digging, adapted for burrowing or digging; as, a fossorial foot; a fossorial animal.

Adapted for digging; -- said of the legs of certain insects.

he coast of Guinea, in West Africa. -- Gold cradle. (Mining) See Cradle, n., 7. -- Gold diggings, the places, or region, where gold is found by digging in sand and gravel from which it is separated by washing. -- Gold end, a fragment of broken gold or jewelry. -- Gold-end man. (a) A buyer of old gold or jewelry. (b…