dredge

¹ American  

[drej] / drɛdʒ /

noun

• dredges
  plural

1. Also called dredging machine. any of various powerful machines for dredging up or removing earth, as from the bottom of a river, by means of a scoop, a series of buckets, a suction pipe, or the like.

2. a barge on which such a machine is mounted.

3. a dragnet or other contrivance for gathering material or objects from the bottom of a river, bay, etc.

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verb (used with object)

dredged, dredging

1. to clear out with a dredge; remove sand, silt, mud, etc., from the bottom of.

2. to take, catch, or gather with a dredge; obtain or remove by a dredge.

verb (used without object)

dredged, dredging

1. to use a dredge.

verb phrase

1. dredge up

   1. to unearth or bring to notice.

      We dredged up some old toys from the bottom of the trunk.

   2. to locate and reveal by painstaking investigation or search.

      Biographers excel at dredging up little known facts.

dredge ² American  

[drej] / drɛdʒ /

verb (used with object)

Cooking.

dredged, dredging

1. to sprinkle or coat with some powdered substance, especially flour.

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dredge ¹ British  

/ drɛdʒ /

noun

1. Also called: dredger. a machine, in the form of a bucket ladder, grab, or suction device, used to remove material from a riverbed, channel, etc

2. another name for dredger 1

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verb

1. to remove (material) from a riverbed, channel, etc, by means of a dredge

2. (tr) to search for (a submerged object) with or as if with a dredge; drag

dredge ² British  

/ drɛdʒ /

verb

1. to sprinkle or coat (food) with flour, sugar, etc

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Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

• dredges
  plural

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Etymology

Origin of dredge¹

First recorded in 1425–75; late Middle English ( Scots ) dreg, as in dreg-boat “dredge boat,” probably an irregular formation of Old English dragan draw ( def. ); see also dray ( def. )

Origin of dredge²

First recorded in 1590–1600; verb use of dredge (now obsolete or dialectal) “mixture of grains,” from late Middle English drag(g)e, dreg(g)e, draget(e), apparently to be identified with Middle English drag(g)e, dragie “sweet sauce, confection; mixture of grains, mix or company of people,” from Anglo-French drag(g)é, dragee, from Old French dragie, dragé; possibly related to dragée

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Explanation

When a harbor becomes filled with silt, you dredge it to make it navigable again. You scoop out the mud with a big shovel, which is also called a dredge, and make a channel deep enough for ships. Dredges have been at work in the Hudson River for years getting rid of industrial toxins, dredging up the contaminated sediment and loading it into barges to be carried away. If your car rolled into a lake by mistake, you might be able to hire a dredge that can be dragged across the bottom of the lake to recover things that have fallen in. You can dredge up memories, too, which usually entails reminding people of unpleasant ones they’d rather forget.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

dredge dredges dredged dredging

The dredge that caught it was sampling for small shelled animals known as brachiopods during a natural history expedition.

From Science Daily ● Oct. 30, 2026

There is no shortage of ideas to dredge from this truth, about how we use art to cope, sometimes to our own detriment.

From Salon ● Oct. 5, 2026

In the longer term, Germany needs to dredge deeper navigation channels and develop a new class of low-draft ships, argued Bilger, a member of Chancellor Friedrich Merz's conservative CDU/CSU bloc.

From Barron's ● Aug. 13, 2026

Divers’ primary tool was a vacuum-like system called a dredge, which sucked up sediment from inside the wreck and deposited it into baskets on the sea floor.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 30, 2026

The evidence he used to draw his conclusions seemed to be buried somewhere in his unconscious, and he could not dredge it up.

From "Blink" by Malcolm Gladwell

Some of the scenes the author dredges up from his deep trawl through Stasi archives are bizarre.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 12, 2026

Such was the lack of food, another crewmate told the court that they had resorted to eating fish and octopus and fish caught by the dredges to survive.

From BBC ● Jun. 8, 2026

But, as big moves so often do, the journey dredges up long-buried feelings of discontent and malaise between the couple.

From Salon ● Jul. 30, 2025

Sometimes what’s left behind are the dredges of history and time, which Mason resurrects onstage.

From Los Angeles Times ● May 15, 2025

The only reliable signs were the black plumes of smoke from the dredges and the ever-present scent of burning leaves from slash piles set aflame by workers.

From "The Devil in the White City" by Erik Larson

And, because phosphate is a low-value commodity, vast quantities must be dredged to make operations viable, she said.

From Barron's ● Aug. 25, 2026

On April 19, Enchassi felt shaken by the bomb that had just exploded in Oklahoma City, and by the memories it dredged up of his childhood in Lebanon.

From Slate ● Apr. 19, 2026

For decades, the Baxter Road owners proposed various defenses to delay the inevitable, from a rock wall to dumping dredged sand, a plan rejected by fishermen.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 8, 2026

"Not only were oysters harvested for food from the earliest days of colonization, but the reefs themselves were dredged and the shells crushed and burned to make lime for cement and mortar," she says.

From Science Daily ● Apr. 6, 2026

After a storm, we always went down to the marsh, because the rains dredged up all kinds of weird stuff.

From "Root Magic" by Eden Royce

But the boom in new products is also dredging up some uncomfortable memories: The previous peak for thematic ETF launches arrived in 2021, as the COVID-era market mania was reaching its crescendo.

From MarketWatch ● Oct. 24, 2026

Long Beach on Tuesday began dredging Alamitos Bay and is moving sand to the beach on the wave-battered Peninsula, using, essentially, a giant hose.

From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 24, 2026

Locals say dredging for the port already damaged coral reefs, resulting in a decline in marine life and tourist interest at a popular snorkeling site.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 3, 2026

The effect is something like uncanny sketch comedy, dredging laughs from Hansen’s stilted expressions and intense demeanor, regardless of a scene’s emotional gravity.

From Salon ● Sep. 26, 2026

“Big Dub and his family were gone, and they weren’t coming back. What was the point in dredging up the past?”

From "The Parker Inheritance" by Varian Johnson

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