excavate
Americanverb (used with object)
-
excavates,
present (3rd person singular)
-
excavated,
past participle, past
-
excavating
present participle
-
to make hollow by removing the inner part; make a hole or cavity in; form into a hollow, as by digging.
The ground was excavated for a foundation.
-
to make (a hole, tunnel, etc.) by removing material.
-
to dig or scoop out (earth, sand, etc.).
-
to expose or lay bare by or as if by digging; unearth.
to excavate an ancient city.
verb
-
to remove (soil, earth, etc) by digging; dig out
-
to make (a hole, cavity, or tunnel) in (solid matter) by hollowing or removing the centre or inner part
to excavate a tooth
-
to unearth (buried objects) methodically in an attempt to discover information about the past
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
-
excavatesimple
-
excavatessimple
-
have excavatedperfect
-
has excavatedperfect
-
am excavatingprogressive
-
are excavatingprogressive
-
is excavatingprogressive
-
have been excavatingperfect progressive
-
has been excavatingperfect progressive
Past
-
excavatedsimple
-
had excavatedperfect
-
was excavatingprogressive
-
were excavatingprogressive
-
had been excavatingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of excavate
1590–1600; < Latin excavātus (past participle of excavāre to hollow out), equivalent to ex- ex- 1 + cav ( um ) hollow, cave + -ātus -ate 1
Explanation
To excavate is to remove or find by digging. If you have rocky soil in your garden, you may have to excavate it to remove the rocks and replace them with additional soil. Construction crews also excavate when they remove material from the ground. Workers slowly excavate subways tunnels using explosives to break up the rock and earth. Then the workers clear away the materials, hollowing out a tunnel as they go. It often takes a lot of time and effort to excavate. But most people would agree a new subway line is dynamite!
Vocabulary lists containing excavate
Power Prefix: ex-
Looking to grow your vocabulary? Check out this interactive, curated word list from our team of English language specialists at Vocabulary.com – one of over 17,000 lists we've built to help learners worldwide!
Holes
Interested in learning more words like this one? Our team at Vocabulary.com has got you covered! You can review flashcards, quiz yourself, practice spelling, and more – and it's all completely free to use!
100 SAT Words Beginning with "E"
Want to remember this word for good? Start your learning journey today with our library of interactive, themed word lists built by the experts at Vocabulary.com – we'll help you make the most of your study time!
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Katy Waldman went down the rabbit hole to excavate this weird chapter of internet history.
From Slate ● Oct. 16, 2026
But the writers wanted to go beyond Aemond’s surface, to “a different place and excavate that trauma and vulnerability.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 20, 2026
His best work tunneled into life’s darkest spaces to excavate ideas about our fears and obsessions, often reflected through dazzling practical effects that matched the naturalism of his greatest feature: a singularly expressive, malleable face.
From Salon ● Jul. 17, 2026
Jones also worked as a scholar of history and made passionate efforts to excavate the satirical intentions of Chaucer’s “The Knight’s Tale” from beneath centuries of deadpan scholarship.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 13, 2026
In 1995 archaeologists began to excavate a site in south-east Turkey called Göbekli Tepe.
From "Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind" by Yuval Noah Harari
As Chelsey excavates the details of Rika’s biography, she explores the blank spaces and lingering questions surrounding her own obscured origins.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 22, 2026
In her 1987 essay, “The Site of Memory,” she utilized a river as a metaphor to discuss how imagination excavates forgotten histories and people.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 2, 2026
In a breezy, sun-soaked 90 minutes, Romvari excavates a lifetime of knotted, intergenerational trauma — a phrase that almost feels too heavy and too burdened by cryptic implications, given how this movie explores it.
From Salon ● May 25, 2026
Paul White usually excavates live electricity and utility cables but on this job the former Royal Marine needed to get his head around the anatomy of a whale.
From BBC ● Nov. 18, 2025
Reaching some marshy spot, he throws himself down, and works away till he excavates a mud-hole in the soil.
From The Western World Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North and South America by William Henry Giles Kingston
Time Team's Prof Carenza Lewis said they had found traces of square features where it is thought people were housed, which "haven't been excavated before, anywhere".
From BBC ● Oct. 4, 2026
Thomas the T. rex was excavated from Hell Creek in Montana, a site that also produced ancient crocodilian fossils analyzed by the researchers.
From Science Daily ● Sep. 20, 2026
The bulk of the canal's construction work involved widening, deepening and modifying existing waterways, while a small section had to be excavated, Xinhua said.
From Barron's ● Sep. 16, 2026
Museum paleontologists excavated some 70% of Thomas’s fossilized skeleton in the early 2000s, making it one of the most complete T. rex specimens ever found.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 16, 2026
Archaeologists have excavated hundreds of American sites unequivocally dating to between 2000 and 11,000 B.C., including dozens of Clovis sites in the North American West, rock shelters in the Appalachians, and sites in coastal California.
From "Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies" by Jared M. Diamond
In Omaha, he cycled through various careers: He started his own excavating business, then began farming, with Warren Buffett later purchasing a farm for him to work.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 19, 2026
Face our fear and root it out, even if it means excavating the hideous rot of actual history?
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 11, 2026
Nepal rescuers are still excavating hydropower tunnels swamped by freezing mud, with hundreds of workers among the missing.
From Barron's ● Sep. 11, 2026
Now, he's excavating his diary to write about his rural upbringing and experiences of working in Las Vegas casinos.
From BBC ● Aug. 21, 2026
Fiddler crabs scuttled here and there, excavating mud to create burrows before the tide came in.
From "Tiger Boy" by Mitali Perkins
Random Word
Spin the wheel and learn a new word!
Get a wordDefinitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
