Excavate
//ˈɛk.skə.veɪt// adj, noun, verb
adj, noun, verb ·Moderate ·High school level
Definitions
Noun
- 1 Any member of a major grouping of unicellular eukaryotes, of the clade Excavata.
Verb
- 1 To make a hole in (something); to hollow. transitive
- 2 remove the inner part or the core of wordnet
- 3 To remove part of (something) by scooping or digging it out. transitive
- 4 form by hollowing wordnet
- 5 To uncover (something) by digging. transitive
Show 2 more definitions
- 6 find by digging in the ground wordnet
- 7 recover through digging wordnet
Adjective
- 1 Made hollow. not-comparable, rare
- 2 excavated, hollowed out not-comparable, obsolete
Example
More examples"We should excavate. Who knows, maybe we'll find something important and become famous."
Etymology
Etymology 1
First attested in 1599, from Latin excavātus (“hollowed out”), perfect passive participle of excavō (“to hollow out”) (see -ate (verb-forming suffix) and -ate (adjective-forming suffix)), from ex (“out”) + cavō (“to hollow out, pierce”), from cavus (“cave, hole”) + -ō (verb-forming suffix). Participial usage up until Early Modern English.
Etymology 2
From a substantivization of Latin excavātus through the associated taxon's name (Excavata), see -ate (noun-forming suffix) and Etymology 1 for more.
Related phrases
More for "excavate"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.