An Americanism dating back to 1875–80
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Maybe a steam shovel mated with a cocoa bean?’
From Washington Times ● Jun. 15, 2021
“Washington overpowered my father like a steam shovel, tossing him into a heap like discarded dirt,” she wrote.
From The Guardian ● Apr. 22, 2018
Any sadness about the loss of this ancient structure may be complicated by the video’s final shot, showing a steam shovel knocking everything down, the brief “Matta-Clark” included.
From New York Times ● Jan. 11, 2018
Or: “Elizabeth always wanted to read fables to her little girl but the child only wanted to hear the story about the little bird who thought a steam shovel was its mother.”
From The New Yorker ● Aug. 15, 2016
When his father operated the huge steam shovel, Joe perched happily on the rear end of the machine and took merry-go-round rides as Harry spun the steam-belching behemoth around and around.
From "The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics" by Daniel James Brown
Dear Carolyn: A dear friend is a steam-shovel mom.
From Washington Post ● Apr. 10, 2022
The next day, a steam-shovel starts digging up the Paul Street lot for the foundation of an apartment house.
From Time Magazine Archive
He was William Devro, a steam-shovel operator from Providence.
From Time Magazine Archive
In the seven mad days before, Chicagoans saw mud slung in steam-shovel fashion, the so-called "better element" cheered 10,000 women marching for "Dever and decency."
From Time Magazine Archive
He no longer paid the slightest heed to the puffing locomotives, busy with their dump-cars, to the mysterious steam-shovel, to the hand cars with their pumping, flying passengers.
From In Old Kentucky by Marshall, Edward
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.
