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:
“All I want is to bury my son beside his brothers,” Al-Zaharnah said, his voice quiet as he stared at the excavator.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 9, 2026
Guam resident Marie and her partner, who were clearing up the debris with an excavator, had to move out of their house after Sinlaku and were living in a van when Bavi struck.
From Barron's ● Jul. 7, 2026
Nearby a large excavator slams its shovel into another building's remains.
From Barron's ● Jul. 6, 2026
In the meantime, Interlune is testing an autonomous excavator and building a research factory in Texas.
From MarketWatch ● Mar. 31, 2026
One afternoon, Dad climbed into the excavator and dug a pit next to the old barn.
From "Educated" by Tara Westover
Rescue teams are using excavators to dig through the debris there, but with the border point buried in many feet of mud, hopes of finding anyone alive have dimmed.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 2, 2026
Caterpillar, which says on its website that the Piracicaba operation makes various loaders, graders, excavators, compactors and other equipment, didn’t respond to requests for comment.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 29, 2026
The international rescue teams are packing up and heavy excavators are clearing rubble left by Venezuela's earthquakes.
From Barron's ● Jul. 6, 2026
Eventually, Interlune aims to place autonomous, regolith-shovoelling excavators on the moon to scoop up the powdery material and process it.
From BBC ● Jun. 16, 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
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.
