excavate
Americanverb (used with object)
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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
They used handheld shovels to excavate blocks of salt, which were processed locally before being shipped around the country.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 13, 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
My brother has claimed one of them for his own; he plans to excavate it, tunneling down from the top, then in from the side to make a side entrance.
From "Cat's Eye" by Margaret Atwood
Here, Travolta excavates truth from fiction, and fiction from truth; in his eyes, reality is manufactured with a sprinkle of both.
From Salon ● Jun. 2, 2026
The Declaration’s audacious promise that all are created equal, a vow Mr. Amar excavates with the precision of an archaeologist and the flair of a storyteller.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 12, 2025
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
Like 20th Century Fox’s “Hidden Figures,” and HBO’s “Something the Lord Made,” “The Six Triple Eight” excavates a thrilling story that has been long buried, in part by the prejudice of its time.
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 19, 2024
This is the smallest of the Australian Cray-fish, and inhabits burrows on land, which it excavates for itself and in which a small store of water is retained.
From Austral English A dictionary of Australasian words, phrases and usages with those aboriginal-Australian and Maori words which have become incorporated in the language, and the commoner scientific words that have had their origin in Australasia by Morris, Edward Ellis
Workers excavated a 3-by 4-foot area to find the source of the leak and will begin welding a patch at the leak site on Thursday.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 23, 2026
Gus was excavated and assembled over five years by a team at Theropoda Expeditions, which painstakingly documented where each piece was found.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 14, 2026
The bunker was built within two of the seven tunnels excavated beneath Brackla Hill during World War Two to store munitions from the nearby Royal Ordnance factory.
From BBC ● Jul. 11, 2026
The impact would have instantly excavated the crater while blasting huge volumes of rock, sediment, and seawater into the atmosphere.
From Science Daily ● Jun. 30, 2026
The trouble with dwarf tunnels was that they were self-sealing, so that if you had to go back the way you came, there was a whole new burrow to be excavated.
From "Artemis Fowl" by Eoin Colfer
For Morrison, writing fiction was a form of “literary archaeology,” excavating history, and how the past hovers over the present.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 2, 2026
Engineers with excavating equipment would be needed to dig through the tons of debris blocking entrances to Iran’s subterranean nuclear complexes and check for mines and booby traps.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 15, 2026
After excavating more than 100 tons of fossils over the years, he added, "If you can brave the elements and are willing to go after the unknown, you might just uncover a lost world."
From Science Daily ● Feb. 23, 2026
Opening drawers, peering into the fridge, excavating the freezer.
From Salon ● Jan. 11, 2026
The Cahokians' solution to this problem was discovered mainly by Woods, the University of Kansas archaeologist and geographer, who has spent two decades excavating Monks Mound.
From "1491" by Charles C. Mann
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.
