excavator
Americannoun
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excavators
plural
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a person or thing that excavates.
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a power-driven machine for digging, moving, or transporting loose gravel, sand, or soil.
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a sharp, spoonlike instrument used for scraping out diseased tissue, as in dentistry.
noun
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a powered machine for digging earth, gravel, sand, etc, esp a caterpillar tractor so equipped
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any person, animal, or thing that excavates
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of excavator
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:
Videos circulating on social media show an excavator tearing down the facade of the building.
From BBC ● Nov. 10, 2026
Che, the former excavator operator, said he was glad his first harvest came through last year, and that he hopes to break even soon.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 15, 2026
The result was a single, wholly outmatched excavator coming to the mountain of masonry that had been the Al-Zaharnah home, where Mutaz and at least six others were still interred.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 9, 2026
Nearby a large excavator slams its shovel into another building's remains.
From Barron's ● Jul. 6, 2026
In the fall, he’d invested a large sum of money in new construction equipment—an excavator, a man lift and a welding trailer.
From "Educated" by Tara Westover
The Hunterian said excavators in the 19th century occasionally swapped over remains from different coffins, with better preserved specimens placed in the most intact or ornate sarcophagi.
From BBC ● Oct. 23, 2026
Authorities have been trying to release the water for the past three days using excavators but have not been very successful, locals told the BBC.
From BBC ● Sep. 30, 2026
At the Albuquerque groundbreaking ceremony, the site was mostly dirt, punctuated by a pair of Deere excavators holding up an American flag.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 9, 2026
In 2024, Attanasio’s construction team was accused of using excavators to dig up sand from Broad Beach and carry it back to his property as part of a beachfront development.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 4, 2026
Although the original excavators remain convinced, a team of archaeologists who were not involved in the excavation but receptive to pre-Clovis claims recently visited the site and came away unconvinced.
From "Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies" by Jared M. Diamond
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