digging stick

American  

noun

1. a pointed or spatulate wooden stick, sometimes having a stone weight or crossbar attached and used in primitive societies for loosening the ground to extract buried wild plant foods and for tilling the soil.

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Etymology

Origin of digging stick

First recorded in 1860–65

Example Sentences

Burr took her digging stick from beside her door and hacked a point on it with her new ax.

From The Cave Boy of the Age of Stone by McIntyre, Margaret A.

So she took her digging stick and dug the teepsinna; but when she pulled it out of the earth, the foundation of the Star Country broke and she fell through with her baby.

From Myths and Legends of the Great Plains by Judson, Katharine Berry

Gill, from the Hervey Islands, calls it a sharpened digging stick, used also as a weapon.

From The Hawaiian Romance Of Laieikawai by Beckwith, Martha Warren

He got his digging stick and proceeded to make a hole in the ground.

From The Mountain Chant, A Navajo Ceremony Fifth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1883-84, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1887, pages 379-468 by Matthews, Washington

She found a root and pushed it out of the ground with her digging stick and threw it into her basket.

From The Cave Boy of the Age of Stone by McIntyre, Margaret A.