excavate : Dictionary / Wörterbuch (BEOLINGUS, TU Chemnitz)

English Dictionary: excavate	by the DICT Development Group
2 results for excavate
From WordNet (r) 3.0 (2006) [wn]:
excavate v recover through digging; "Schliemann excavated Troy"; "excavate gold" Synonym(s): excavate, unearth find by digging in the ground; "I dug up an old box in the garden" Synonym(s): excavate, dig up, turn up form by hollowing; "Carnegie had a lake excavated for Princeton University's rowing team"; "excavate a cavity" remove the inner part or the core of; "the mining company wants to excavate the hillside" Synonym(s): excavate, dig, hollow
From Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913) [web1913]:
Excavate \Ex"cavate\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. {Excavated}; p. pr. & vb. n. {Excavating}.] [L. excavatus, p. p. of excavare to excavate; ex out + cavare to make hollow, cavus hollow. See {Cave}.] 1. 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. 2. To form by hollowing; to shape, as a cavity, or anything that is hollow; as, to excavate a canoe, a cellar, a channel. 3. (Engin.) To dig out and remove, as earth. The material excavated was usually sand. --E. L. Corthell. {Excavating pump}, a kind of dredging apparatus for excavating under water, in which silt and loose material mixed with water are drawn up by a pump. --Knight.