excavate
Americanverb (used with object)
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excavates,
present (3rd person singular)
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excavated,
past participle, past
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excavating
present participle
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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.
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to make (a hole, tunnel, etc.) by removing material.
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to dig or scoop out (earth, sand, etc.).
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to expose or lay bare by or as if by digging; unearth.
to excavate an ancient city.
verb
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to remove (soil, earth, etc) by digging; dig out
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to make (a hole, cavity, or tunnel) in (solid matter) by hollowing or removing the centre or inner part
to excavate a tooth
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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
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excavatesimple
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excavatessimple
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have excavatedperfect
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has excavatedperfect
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am excavatingprogressive
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are excavatingprogressive
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is excavatingprogressive
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have been excavatingperfect progressive
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has been excavatingperfect progressive
Past
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excavatedsimple
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had excavatedperfect
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was excavatingprogressive
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were excavatingprogressive
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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-
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Holes
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100 SAT Words Beginning with "E"
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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:
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
To excavate biblical Palestine was, in his mind, to restore Jewish sovereignty over the Jewish story.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 7, 2026
In 2022, Sereno returned with a 100-person team and 64 Nigerien guards to excavate the "earth-shattering site".
From Barron's ● Feb. 27, 2026
“But Georgi kept wanting to get underneath it, to excavate it. Explore the fire, explore the trauma. She came in and said, ‘This show is about identity.’
From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 11, 2026
Then, a few years ago, the white man from Ibadan came to excavate.
From "Half of a Yellow Sun" by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
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 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
The novel balances the history with the storytelling as it excavates the connections among these intersecting narratives.
From Seattle Times ● Mar. 18, 2024
That Brahmana who excavates a tank, and he that plants trees, and he that performs sacrifices, are all worshipped in heaven even as men that are devoted to truthfulness of speech.
From The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 Books 13, 14, 15, 16, 17 and 18 by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
Although the quarry was discovered in 1992 and excavated through 2019, many of the fossils recovered there had never been formally described and remained largely unknown to science.
From Science Daily ● Oct. 8, 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
Only the back of the head was visible to George, invisible for centuries was the beak, which was about a foot long when excavated.
From BBC ● Sep. 4, 2026
It began in late 1981 when McKee and his Marauders were confident they had excavated most of the artifacts.
From "Shipwrecked!" by Martin W. Sandler
More than 100 volunteers were involved in excavating test pits which uncovered what were thought to be the medieval boundary walls of the hospital.
From BBC ● Oct. 4, 2026
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
Nepal rescuers are still excavating hydropower tunnels swamped by freezing mud, with hundreds of workers among the missing.
From Barron's ● Sep. 11, 2026
Schwimmer has spent more than four decades searching for, excavating, and studying fossils belonging to Deinosuchus schwimmeri.
From Science Daily ● Aug. 5, 2026
On July 3, 1908, archaeologists excavating the ancient Minoan palace at Phaistos, on the island of Crete, chanced upon one of the most remarkable objects in the history of technology.
From "Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies" by Jared M. Diamond
Definitions 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.
