ditchdigger

American  

[dich-dig-er] / ˈdɪtʃˌdɪg ər /

noun

1. a worker whose occupation is digging ditches, especially with pick and shovel.

2. a person engaged in exhausting manual work, especially work that requires little or no originality.

3. Also called ditcher, trencher.  a power excavating machine designed to remove earth in a continuous line and to a predetermined width and depth, as by means of a rotating belt equipped with scoops.

---

Other Word Forms

• ditchdigging noun

Etymology

Origin of ditchdigger

First recorded in 1895–1900; ditch + digger

Example Sentences

He was active in his high school drama club and majored in speech and drama at the University of Toledo, where he worked as a ditchdigger to pay for his education.

From Washington Post • Jun. 13, 2022

In the film, Rogen plays Herschel Greenbaum, a struggling ditchdigger who flees his Eastern European shtetl in 1919 for a better life in America.

From New York Times • Aug. 5, 2020

Typists In Cleveland, after scientific tests with typists, Patent Attorney Frank M. Slough declared that the average typist does more manual labor in an eight-hour day than a ditchdigger.

From Time Magazine Archive

Neither planner nor architect nor lawyer nor legislator, just a self-described "senior ditchdigger," he was at once utterly pragmatic and utterly visionary.

From Time Magazine Archive

But here I was without a financial resource—couldnt hire a ditchdigger, much less the highpriced talent I needed—and someone else might get a brainstorm when he saw the lawn and beat me to it.

From Greener Than You Think by Moore, Ward