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Digs   /dɪgz/   Listen
Digs

noun
1.
An excavation for ore or precious stones or for archaeology.  Synonym: diggings.
2.
Temporary living quarters.  Synonyms: diggings, domiciliation, lodgings, pad.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Digs" Quotes from Famous Books



... see if the beetle would be led by instinct to form its round pellets of mud as is its custom on the banks of the Nile, and having placed its egg in the centre, it begins to roll it from the margin of the river until it is above high-water mark. There it digs a hole and buries the pellet, leaving the sun to hatch the eggs in due time. Travellers who have watched the process describe the untiring way in which both the male and female beetle roll these pellets, ...
— Wild Nature Won By Kindness • Elizabeth Brightwen

... knows it the drifting boy finds that the boy who rows is miles ahead with the girl, and all the drifting boy can do is to yawn and say, 'Just my dumbed luck.' Dogs that just drift and lay in the shade, and loll, never amount to anything. The dog that digs out the woodchuck does not drift; he digs and barks, and saws wood, and by and by he has the woodchuck by the pants, and shakes the daylights out of him. He might lay by the woodchuck hole and drift all day, and the woodchuck would just stay in the hole and laugh at the dog. ...
— Peck's Uncle Ike and The Red Headed Boy - 1899 • George W. Peck

... the last sheaf is Boba (Old Woman), answering to the Polish name Baba. The Boba is said to sit in the corn which is left standing last. The person who binds the last sheaf or digs the last potato is the subject of much banter, and receives and long retains the name of the Old Rye-woman or the Old Potato-woman. The last sheaf—the Boba—is made into the form of a woman, carried solemnly through the village on ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... the monster could no longer drop Or raise his horrid jaws, which this extends. 'Tis thus who digs the mine is wont to prop The ground, and where he works the roof suspends, Lest sudden ruin whelm him from atop, While he incautiously his task intends. Roland (so far apart was either hook) But by a leap could reach the ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto

... was little Jack who found the bedroom in question, While trotting about at the foot of the cliff, he discovered, behind a turn of the rock, one of those grottoes well polished, well hollowed out, which the sea herself digs, when the waves, enlarged by the tempest, ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne

... were of high birth, accustomed to having their own way, and with extravagant tastes and notions. Napoleon spoke of this frequently to the friends he made; but both Demetrius and Alexander laughed at him, and said, "Well, what of it? Would you have us all digs and hermits—like you? Here is the chance to have a good time, to live high, and to let the king pay for it—the king or our fathers. Why shouldn't ...
— The Boy Life of Napoleon - Afterwards Emperor Of The French • Eugenie Foa

... other never out of debt; one clamped by honor, the other feeling not its restraining pinch. But together they would ride abroad, laughing along the road. To Mrs. Cranceford old Gid was a pest. With the shrewd digs of a woman, the blood-letting side stabs of her sex, she had often shown her disapproval of the strong favor in which the Major held him; she vowed that her husband had gathered many an oath from Gid's swollen store of execration (when, ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume III. (of X.) • Various

... not lived forty years in the world, and twenty years in that world of French culture which digs and digs into human nature, without having heard philosophers opine that, in matters of the heart, women have no illusions at all, and that it is only men who go blindfold into the tortuous ways of love. But he was too practical a man to build up a false hope ...
— The Last Hope • Henry Seton Merriman

... an ant-hill it takes but a few minutes to tear up the hard, cemented clay and lay the deep galleries bare; then, putting its gutta-percha muzzle to the mouth of each, it draws such a blast of air through them that the industrious labourers are sucked into its gullet in drifts. Afterwards it digs right down to the royal chamber, licks up the bloated queen, and goes ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)

... must sleep there to-night. But I'm not going to have my breakfast there to-morrow morning. No fear! I'll have it up town. Lucas'll be able to put me up to some new digs. He always knows about that sort of thing. Then I'll drive down and remove all my worldly ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett

... of the beggars wants to cast a spell," he had said, his lip curling in a sardonic smile, "he takes a bit of cloth from some garment his enemy has worn and at the hour of midnight slinks into a graveyard and digs down until he finds a body. If he wants to cripple his enemy's hand, he puts the cloth in the fingers of the corpse. If he wishes his enemy to lose his mind he puts it over the skull, and if he wants him dead, ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby

... invariably lay their eggs during the night. In the evening they may be seen with their heads above water, eager for the moment of the sun's setting; then, directly it is dark, they land and commence operations. The animal first digs a hole, three feet in diameter and four in depth, with its hind feet, which are very long, and furnished with crooked claws. So anxious is it to lay its eggs that it often descends into a hole that has been dug by ...
— The Young Llanero - A Story of War and Wild Life in Venezuela • W.H.G. Kingston

... armadillo is at home, he cuts a long, slender stick, and introduces it into the hole, carefully observing the line which it takes, and then sinks a pit in the sand to catch the end of it. This done, he puts it further into the hole, and digs another pit; till he at last comes up with the poor armadillo— which has been making a passage in the sand, till, from its exertions, it has lost ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston

... ye are!" and Teig was away to the corner, digging fast at the loose clay, as a terrier digs at a bone. He filled his hands full of the shining gold, then hurried to the ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various

... suddenly bucked up her bottom, as a challenge to me go on. Thus spurred on, I slowly drew out to the very head of my Prick, then gently pushing in again, kept repeating the motion, each time gradually increasing the pace, till we arrived at the short digs, when clinging closely to her, my hands pressed up her bottom till we could scarcely move, as the spurts of our semen mingled in her womb, and I felt her receive it with the same peculiar and perceptible shudder of delight which warned my aunt to ...
— Forbidden Fruit • Anonymous

... Babes in the Wood' is interesting in the extreme. We would say, en passant, however, that Artemus Ward is a perfect steam factory of puns and a museum of American humour. Humanity seems to him to be a vast mine, out of which he digs tons of fun; and life a huge forest, in which he can cut down 'cords' of comicality. Language with him is like the brass balls with which the juggler amuses us at the circus—ever being tossed up, ever glittering, ever thrown about at pleasure. We intended to report ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 1 • Charles Farrar Browne

... the fool's gold which is found a-plenty in every life; and we don't delve for the real gold. We slip along in a don't-care way, neglecting the opportunities that come to us to better humanity; seeking the easiest tasks, satisfied with that kind of existence. The miner who digs in the bowels of the earth for his gold has to work and struggle and strive. So we, too, if we make the most of God's gifts to us, must work ...
— Heart of Gold • Ruth Alberta Brown

... to break my colt, Till he's ole enough to trabble. I nebber digs my taters up Wen dey's only right to grabble. So w'en you sees me risin' up To structify in meetin', You can know I'se climbed de Knowledge Tree An' ...
— Negro Folk Rhymes - Wise and Otherwise: With a Study • Thomas W. Talley

... garden roods, With bells and cries in vain: the while Lamps, plate, and the decanter smile On the forgotten board. But she, Deaf, blind, and prone on face and knee, Forgets time, family, and feast, And digs like a ...
— New Poems • Robert Louis Stevenson

... us a man who is thus seeking. He has heard that in old times a great treasure was hidden in a particular field. So he digs away patiently in various places until, at last, he finds out that what he heard is quite true. He is sure the treasure is there; and his desire is to become possessed of the field, so that he may obtain the buried ...
— Mother Stories from the New Testament • Anonymous

... to various sources of pollution. These houses are for the most part now abandoned to the foreigner, who uses them for the primitive purposes of shelter without the ennobling intellectual life they once harbored. Now and then a grandson rescues the old place, brings water from a spring or brook, digs a drain, lets light into the cellar, and builds on a kitchen ...
— The Cost of Shelter • Ellen H. Richards

... the back of the little creature, which quickly disappears as the temperature declines. The ice hare lives on the bark and twigs of the arctic willow and the dry moss and stubble of the desolate regions it inhabits. It makes its nest among the rocks, and in winter digs a hole in ...
— Harper's Young People, January 27, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... helping me now. But I find there are no potatoes in the house, and I've been wondering who would get them. Lill says they are to be dug in the field, and that she digs them sometimes; but that ...
— The Young Surveyor; - or Jack on the Prairies • J. T. Trowbridge

... domes may feed a tyrant's ire, Thy shrines; unwilling, burn with Danish fire; Thy latest king, like Constantine, in vain May join his slaughtered subjects on the plain!— Handmaid of Science, and by Science fed, Each vice already rears its blooming head: Already Treason digs his silent mine; } With, civil follies, foreign wars combine; } And raging Faction waits to give th' appointed sign. } Oh! in that hour, when growing dangers rise, When the weak trembles, and the faithless flies, Gustavus, fight for her! ...
— Gustavus Vasa - and other poems • W. S. Walker

... is over-curious, and wants to know more than he ought, always carries the match in his hand to set fire to the powder-room of his own fortunes; and he who pries into others' affairs is frequently a loser in his own; for generally he who digs holes to search for treasures, comes to a ditch into which he himself falls—as happened to the daughter of a gardener in the ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile

... Grace's friends, she religiously avoided the two seniors as well as the Semper Fidelis girls. She became sullen and moody, apparently lost all interest in breaking rules and studied with an earnestness that evoked the commendation of the faculty, and caused her to be classed with the "digs" by the more frivolous-minded freshmen. Her reputation for dashing off clever bits of verse also became established, and her themes were frequently read in the freshman English classes and occasionally in sophomore English, ...
— Grace Harlowe's Third Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower

... pronounced "Keenekar," is a rabbit-warren. Cuinin is the diminutive of cu, a dog of any sort; and from the Celtic cu, the Greeks took their word kyon, a dog. I am of opinion that the origin of rabbit is in the Celtic word rap, i. e. a creature that digs and ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 180, April 9, 1853 • Various

... which contains considerably more of the harder precious stone layer than the original sandy strata, or the rock from which they originated. Where this natural washing ends, the gem collector begins. He searches for a suitable valley, digs down a greater or less depth from the surface to the layer of clay mixed with coarse sand resting on the rock, which experience has taught him to contain gems[388]. At the washings which I saw, the clayey gravel was taken out of this ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold

... in the course; The goal by hot wheels shunn'd, the famous prize, Exalt them to the gods that rule mankind; This joys, if rabbles fickle as the wind Through triple grade of honours bid him rise, That, if his granary has stored away Of Libya's thousand floors the yield entire; The man who digs his field as did his sire, With honest pride, no Attalus may sway By proffer'd wealth to tempt Myrtoan seas, The timorous captain of a Cyprian bark. The winds that make Icarian billows dark The merchant fears, and hugs the ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace

... Every day she thinks of you. When she is a-hungered, when her man brings her nothing from the hunt—as—you have said, Chisera. When she digs roots with the old women and no one prevents her for the sake of a ...
— The Arrow-Maker - A Drama in Three Acts • Mary Austin

... Thatcher, who was sitting in the front row, gave sundry digs in the ribs to his cousin Tom, and they ...
— Captain Jinks, Hero • Ernest Crosby

... that man who went again, alone, Into thy forest dark—Lord, he was brave! That man a fly has killed, whose bones are left Unburied till an earthquake digs his grave. ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various

... quotation from Camden's account of Ireland, to be founded upon a practice really observed by the uncivilised natives of that country: "When any one gets a fall, says the informer of Camden, he starts up, and, turning three times to the right, digs a hole in the earth; for they imagine that there is a spirit in the ground, and if he falls sick in two or three days, they send one of their women that is skilled in that way to the place, where ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson

... property: or he finds, if more shrewd and adventurous, that the "beck" running down the mountain-side, or the minerals beneath his feet, can be turned into a new source of wealth; and leaving the old plodding life of a landowner with small capital, he turns manufacturer, or digs for ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell

... he who digs deep with a spade comes to a spring of water, so the student, who humbly serves his teacher, attains the knowledge which lies deep in ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke

... warden, bitterly; "all you folks hang together like bees in a swarm-bunch. You're nuthin' but a passel o' critters that digs ginseng for them Chinese an' goes gunnin' for ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers

... popularity which meant so little to Sylvia, and which she so ignored) had given him a large acquaintance among the class which it was necessary to reach. He knew the men who at the University had been the digs, and jays, and grinds, and who were now the prosperous farmers, the bankers, the school-trustees, the leading men in their communities; and his geniality, vivacity, and knack for informal public speaking made him eminently fitted to represent the University in the somewhat thankless ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield

... was relieved. The chunky man dug busily. There was only the sound of breathing, and the occasional fall of thrown-out earth against the metal of the thing that confined them. The chunky man said briskly, "This dirt digs all right. We just got ...
— Operation Terror • William Fitzgerald Jenkins

... bear lives in a region infested only by small game, such as rabbits, wood-mice, ants and grubs, and when he cannot get a meal by turning over flat rocks or stripping the bark from a decaying tree, he digs roots for a living. He is not accustomed to battle and he is not a killer, and he may be timorous in the presence of man. Another Grizzly haunts the cattle or sheep ranges and is accustomed to seeing men and beasts flee before him for their lives. He lives by the ...
— Bears I Have Met—and Others • Allen Kelly

... reply, while she digs a hole in the gravel path with the heel of her white satin shoe. 'I boxed him on the ear, I hardly knew what I was doing at the moment, and now I can't think how I could do it—you see he'd asked ...
— Lippa • Beatrice Egerton

... fell in with any of the forest ponies before; I must, therefore, have walked in a direction quite contrary to what I usually do. I do not know where I am—the scenery is new to me. What a fool I am! It's lucky that nobody except Humphrey digs pitfalls, or I should probably have been in one by this time; and I've brought out my gun and left the dog at home. Well, I suppose I can find my way back." Edward then surveyed the whole herd of ponies, which were at no great distance from him. There was a fine horse or two among them, ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat

... found containing thirty-five newly-laid eggs, and they declared that the crocodile would lay as many more the second night in another place. The eggs were a foot deep in the sand on the top of a bank ten feet high. The animal digs a hole with its foot, covers the eggs, and leaves them till the river rises over the nest in about three months afterwards, when she comes back, and assists the young ones out. We once saw opposite Tette young ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone

... see the flowers grow, To see the pansies in a row; I think a well-kept garden's fine, And wish that such a one were mine; But one can't have a stock of flowers Unless he digs and digs ...
— Just Folks • Edgar A. Guest

... them on the sand, and in order to devour them at their ease, adroitly turn them on their backs; and as they turn many more than they can devour in one night, the Indians often profit by their cunning. The jaguar pursues the turtle quite into the water, and when not very deep, digs up the eggs; they, with the crocodile, the heron, and the gallinago vulture, are the most formidable enemies the little turtles have. Humboldt justly remarks, "When we reflect on the difficulty that the naturalist finds in getting out the body of the turtle, without ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various

... me such nasty little digs?" she asked. "You need not have stopped smoking just because I ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy

... faiths and the building up of the new in the life of some representative man or woman. There is much more in such a novel than appears. First, there is the work of the scholar, of the man of research. He is like the miner who works underground and digs out of the hard earth that "gem of purest ray serene," the truth. Then comes the artist, just as cultured as the scholar, and only less learned, who polishes the gem and gives it its setting in pages of brilliant writing, and ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan

... don't think that I should be here now; vell, the longer I stopped to consider, the wus I felt; and at length, ven the fire begins to burn the nice clothes vich I vore, I thought it bout 'time to do somethin'; so I 'appens to cast my hies on this loose dirt, and then quicker than lightning I digs a place, and lays down and covers me all hup, leaving only a leetle 'ole to breathe through. It vas varm, though—hawf'ul varm; and at one time I feared I should die; but the Lord supported me in my trouble, and here I is, safe and ready to be ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes

... for the purpose out of soft wood, is fixed upright in the ground beneath the BATANG PRA. This is called TEGULUN KALINGAI USA, which, literally translated, is "the reflected image of the body." The operator makes a fire beside the TEGULUN, digs a small hole in the ground, and fills it with water coloured with ferruginous earth. This pool is called BAWANG DAAR,[153] the lake of blood. Sitting before the TEGULUN he scans the space of sky framed by the BATANG PRA, searching for some ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall

... propensities contrived to slink downstairs into the kitchen." The White Lady of Avenel, who appears in The Monastery (1830)—a boisterous creature who rides on horseback, splashes through streams and digs a grave—was wisely withdrawn in the sequel, The Abbot. In ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead

... he may read that binds the sheaf Or builds the house, or digs the grave, And those wild eyes that watch the wave In roarings ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell

... field is where you can dig out gold with a pick and shovel and wash it out with a pannikin. You don't want any machines, and everybody digs for himself, or mates with other fellows, and if you want a man to do a job you've got to pay him as much as he could dig for ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller

... join them again at the next station, where they have stopped at the little garden belonging to the gatekeeper; both are already in deep conversation with him while he digs his garden-borders, and marks out the places for flower-seeds. He informs them that it is the time for hoeing out weeds, for making grafts and layers, for sowing annuals, and for destroying the insects ...
— An "Attic" Philosopher, Complete • Emile Souvestre

... of the design. The living embryo is there, and waits to be developed into full organic structure. Whence and how does the novelist obtain the vital tissue which must be his material? The answer is that he digs it out of himself. First-class fiction is, and must be, in the final resort autobiographical. What else should it be? The novelist may take notes of phenomena likely to be of use to him. And he may acquire the skill to invent very apposite illustrative incident. But he cannot invent psychology. ...
— The Author's Craft • Arnold Bennett

... tray. "They don't know anything about folks' rights. Think everything growing is common property. There's one old woman who pretends she doesn't understand me when I tell her to stop digging in the lawn, and what she digs is nothing but old roots and weed stuff," and Jennie threw back her shoulders, assuming an attitude ...
— The Girl Scouts at Bellaire - Or Maid Mary's Awakening • Lilian C. McNamara Garis

... growing youth between sixteen and eighteen there is a bit of the soul of Hamlet. Don't ask him to understand the war! (All right for you men, who have had your fill!) He has all he can do to understand life and forgive its existence. As a rule he digs himself in with his dream and with the arts, until the time comes when he has got used to his incarnation, and the grub has achieved its agonizing passage from larva to winged insect. What a need he has for peace and meditation during these April ...
— Pierre and Luce • Romain Rolland

... eaten the Partridge his feathers fell off, his strength failed, and he died on the spot. Know that he who digs for his brother a pit, himself soon ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester

... I'm for real stuff tonight. You find Four-Eye and get us some horse." Yeah, he digs me then. He looks like he's pretty scared and I know he is, because this punk hasn't had anything bigger than reefers in his life. But I'm for busting a couple of caps of H, and what I do he's going to do. He takes off to find Four-Eye ...
— The Day of the Boomer Dukes • Frederik Pohl

... "If he digs round as fast on land as he does in the water there's goin' to be a circus when we get him out on the bank," ...
— Dick in the Everglades • A. W. Dimock

... took particular pains to be unusually friendly to every one with whom she came in contact, exhibiting a gay graciousness of manner toward a number of girls she had secretly labeled, "digs, prigs and plodders." This quite won their trusting hearts and made them innocently wonder how they had, so far, happened to miss becoming really well acquainted with ...
— Grace Harlowe's Return to Overton Campus • Jessie Graham Flower

... and as the money wa'nt raisable, P'silly took on and 'lowed that she was goin' to die, and she kept on havin' sinkin' spells and such, and bye and bye she lays on the bed and wauls up her eyes and breathes her last, to all appearances. Uncle Buck gits skeered and digs out for Doc' Simpson, and when Doc' Simpson gits thar, thar was the old neighbor wimmen tryin' to comfort uncle Buck and sayin', 'Ba'r your burden, Buck; the Lord has give and the Lord has tuck away.' Doc' Simpson ...
— Shawn of Skarrow • James Tandy Ellis

... soul. Not what man sees, but what God sees,—the Ideas of Plato, seeds of creation lying burningly on the Divine Hand,—it is toward these that he struggles. Not with the combination of humanity in action, but with the primal elements of humanity, he has to do; and he digs where he stands,—preferring to seek them in his own soul as the nearest reflex of that absolute Mind, according to the intuitions of which he desires to perceive and speak. Such a poet does not deal habitually with the picturesque groupings and tempestuous tossings of the ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke

... watchful, and follow the Plough very close) it is all soft, and full of whitish guts; a worm that is in Norfolk, and some other Countries called a Grub, and is bred of the spawn or eggs of a Beetle, which she leaves in holes that she digs in the ground under Cow or Horse-dung, and there rests all Winter, and in March or April comes to be first a red, and then a black Beetle: gather a thousand or two of these, and put them with a peck or two of their own earth into some tub or firkin, ...
— The Compleat Angler - Facsimile of the First Edition • Izaak Walton

... him of her home "down east," of how keen she was to come to the wild, wonderful west, of how she thinks that "one crowded hour of glorious life" is worth a whole leaden existence. That reminds her of her graduating essay, which she digs out of the trunk, tied with baby-blue ribbon. "One Crowded Hour" was her burning topic, but her hours and days and years have been crowded only with homely toil and ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell

... James digs in the soft sand with his spade, and Mary picks up little stones and puts them in ...
— McGuffey's First Eclectic Reader, Revised Edition • William Holmes McGuffey

... holiday, that comes, like Christmas, once a year, and we are taking a little tour in Scotland to see the curiosities, and to breathe the sea air, and to get some fishing whenever we can. I'm the fat cashier who digs holes in a drawerful of gold with a copper shovel, and you're the arithmetical young man who sits on a perch behind me and keeps the books. Scotland's a beautiful country, William. Can you make whisky-toddy? I can; and, what's ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins

... Adieu, ma cherie! mon coeur est toujours a toi. Her mother is a well-grown woman also. See where she digs by the wayside. Ma foi! the riper fruit is ever the sweeter. Bon jour, ma belle dame! God have you in his keeping! Said Sir Nigel where ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle

... foreign nations, and among the States, and with the Indian tribes.' To erect a bank, and to regulate commerce, are very different acts. He who erects a bank creates a subject of commerce in its bills: so does he who makes a bushel of wheat, or digs a dollar out of the mines. Yet neither of these persons regulates commerce thereby. To make a thing which may be bought and sold, is not to prescribe regulations for buying and selling. Besides, if this were an exercise of the power of regulating commerce, ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... tucks his napkin under his chin natural and gazes around int'rested. He glances suspicious at a wine cooler that's carted by, and when the two gents at the next table are served with tall glasses of ale he looks around as if he was locatin' an exit. Next he digs into an inside pocket, hauls out a paper, spreads it on the ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford

... running dive from the bank and leaves the luckless Parson to boil over inwardly as he digs his sculls spitefully into the water and begins his ...
— The Willoughby Captains • Talbot Baines Reed

... goes to wall and digs up and down the length of it, to see if there are jewels on ...
— Aria da Capo • Edna St. Vincent Millay

... time sitting here jawing at each other like a pair of old women. It's up to us to obliterate Lidgerwood; after which it will be up to you to get his job and cover up your tracks as you can. If he lives, he'll dig; and if he digs, he'll turn up things that neither of us can stand for. See how he hangs onto that building-and-loan ghost. He'll tree somebody on that before he's through, you mark my words! And it runs in my mind that ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde

... with which he struggles up the stairs is his own, he has the feeling of a victor when he reaches the top; but since it belongs to the teacher, he feels that he has finished a disagreeable task, takes his compensating pittance in the form of a grade, and goes on his complacent way. The boy who digs potatoes from his own garden thinks them larger and smoother than the ones he digs for wages. The latter are potatoes, while the former are his potatoes. Proprietary interest sinks its roots deep into the ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson

... come up an' digs me out o' my front door like—like—" She paused, her sunny laugh rippling out at the recollection of it all, and Johnson noted the two delightful dimples in her rounded cheeks. Indeed, she had never appeared prettier to him than when displaying her two rows of perfect, dazzling teeth, ...
— The Girl of the Golden West • David Belasco

... comfortably. Otho Fabricius, in his "Fauna Graenlandica" (p. 24), informs us that the tendons are converted into sewing threads. The female bear has one or two, and sometimes three, cubs at a time. They are born in the winter, and the mother generally digs for them and for herself a snug nestling-place in the snow. The males in the winter time leave the coast, and go out on the ice-fields, to the edge of the open water after seals.—Adam White, in ...
— Heads and Tales • Various

... make account when the noise of the trumpet soundeth."—Job 39, 23 (Douai version).—Translator's Note.) With its carpenter's gouge, a strong black mandible, short, devoid of notches, scooped into a sharp-edged spoon, it digs the opening of its tunnel. The piece cut out is a mouthful which, as it enters the stomach, yields its scanty juices and accumulates behind the worker in heaps of wormed wood. The refuse leaves room in front by passing through the worker. A labour at once of nutrition ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre

... that she must not fall asleep. When the morning dawns she will find her way back right enough; but there are long, long hours between now and the morning. She finds a place where the snow is soft, and she digs and digs in it, and then lies down in it and covers herself up. The snow is so dry that even with the heat of her body it hardly melts at all, and the great weight of snow over her keeps her warm. So now she knows she is ...
— Betty Vivian - A Story of Haddo Court School • L. T. Meade

... with artlessly constructed huts, and the skins of the beasts of the forest; by degrees he mends their appearance, renders them more convenient: he establishes manufactories to supply his immediate wants; he digs clay, gold, and other fossils from the bowels of the earth; converts them into bricks for his house, into vessels for his use, gradually improves their shape, and augments their beauty. To a being exalted above our terrestrial globe, man would not appear less subjected ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach

... in India; and I have seen no part of India in which so small a portion of the surface is unfit for tillage. The moisture rises to the surface just as it is required; and a tolerable crop is got by a poor man who cannot afford to keep a plough, and merely burns down the grass and digs the surface with his spade, or pickaxe, before he sows the seed. Generally, however, the tillage, in the portion cultivated, is very good. The surface is ploughed and cross-ploughed from six to twenty, or even thirty, times in the season; and the harrow and roller are often applied till every ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman

... to cast up dikes around it, to preserve himself by the neighbouring inundation. Another, like a mole, has so pointed and so sharp a snout, that in one moment he pierces through the hardest ground in order to provide for himself a subterranean retreat. The cunning fox digs a kennel with two holes to go out and come in at, that he may not be either surprised or trapped by the huntsmen. The reptiles are of another make. They curl, wind, shrink, and stretch by the springs of their muscles; they creep, twist about, squeeze, and hold fast the bodies ...
— The Existence of God • Francois de Salignac de La Mothe- Fenelon

... into the farmyard, where the dog is loose and the chickens are safe under lock and key, instead of roosting in trees; across the highway, and through the swamp, and into the big bare empty woods; till in the sad gray morning light he digs under the wild apple tree and sits down on the snow to eat a frozen apple, lest his stomach cry too loudly while he sleeps the day away and tries to ...
— Secret of the Woods • William J. Long

... 'that the grand security of the matrimonial state, and the pillar upon which it stands, is founded upon the wife's belief of an absolute unconditional fidelity to the husband;' by which bold assertion he strikes at the root, digs the foundation, and removes the basis upon which the happiness of a married state is built. As for his personal reflections, I would gladly know who are those 'wanton wives' he speaks of? who are those ladies of ...
— The History of John Bull • John Arbuthnot

... savvy? Caramba! Have an eggnog or a prairie oyster. Enemy? Avuncular's got my timepiece. Ten to. Obligated awful. Don't mention it. Got a pectoral trauma, eh, Dix? Pos fact. Got bet be a boomblebee whenever he wus settin sleepin in hes bit garten. Digs up near the Mater. Buckled he is. Know his dona? Yup, sartin I do. Full of a dure. See her in her dishybilly. Peels off a credit. Lovey lovekin. None of your lean kine, not much. Pull down the blind, love. Two Ardilauns. ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... Whewell (Philosophy of Discovery, p. 242) questions this statement, and asks, "Are we to say that a mole can not dig the ground, except he has an idea of the ground, and of the snout and paws with which he digs it?" I do not know what passes in a mole's mind, nor what amount of mental apprehension may or may not accompany his instinctive actions. But a human being does not use a spade by instinct; and he certainly could not use it unless he had knowledge of a spade, and of the ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill

... learned of schools Of the wild bee's morning chase, Of the wild-flowers' time and place, Flight of fowl and habitude Of the tenants of the wood; How the tortoise bears his shell; How the woodchuck digs his cell; And the ground-mole makes his well; How the robin feeds her young; How the ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [December, 1897], Vol 2. No 6. • Various

... worm-shop. He digs heaps of 'em and keeps 'em here, and when we want any to go afishing with, we buy some of him. It saves lots of trouble, only he charged too much for 'em. Why, last time we traded I had to pay two cents a dozen, and then got little ones. Jack's mean sometimes, ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott

... (psoralea esculenta), he may be seen tearing up the earth with his claws, and leaving it turned into furrows—as if a drove of hogs had been "rooting" the ground. On the bottoms of the streams he also digs up the "kamas" root (camassia esculenta), the "yampah," (anethum graveolens), the "kooyah" (Valeriana edulis), and the root of a species of thistle (circium virginianum). Many species of fruits and berries furnish him ...
— Bruin - The Grand Bear Hunt • Mayne Reid

... was the reply. "Dry shaves, tweaks, scalpers, twisters, choko, tappers, digs, benders, shinners, ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren

... as we reached the porch, "it wasn't us that crawled, it was moles, and they just digs right ahead and turns up the ground and flowers and everything, and never thinks things, do ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright

... favourite gun ready; your attendant behind is as excited as yourself, and sways from side to side to peer into the gloomy depths of the jungle; in front, the mahout wriggles on his seat, as if by his motion he could urge the elephant to a quicker advance. He digs his toes savagely into his elephant behind the ear; the line is closing up; every eye is fixed on the moving jungle ahead. The roaring of the flames behind, and the crashing of the dried reeds as the elephants force their ponderous frames through the intertwisted stems and foliage, are the only ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis

... "De more ve digs into de eart'- Or less ve seeks a star,- De nearer ve to Natur coom, More panthéistich far; To him who reads dis myst'ry right, Mit insbiration gifen, Der Raffael's rollen in de dirt, Vhile Brauwer ...
— The Breitmann Ballads • Charles G. Leland

... the whole social body. The waiter one tips probably has a hundred or so in some remote company, the will of the eminent labour reformer reveals an admirably distributed series of investments, the bishop sells tea and digs coal, or at any rate gets a profit from some unknown persons tea-selling or coal-digging, to eke out the direct recompense of his own modest corn-treading. Indeed, above the labouring class, the number of individuals in the social body whose gross income is entirely the result ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells

... men lose money in railway speculations nowadays. We sank him, and that was the last of it. After he had towed us I don't know how far-out of sight of the ship at any rate,—he suddenly stopped, and we pulled up and gave him some tremendous digs with the lances, until he spouted jets of blood, and we made sure of him, when, all at once, down he went head foremost like a cannon-ball, and took all the line out of both boats, so we had to cut, and he never came up again. At least, if ...
— The World of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne

... a world is this! The slave that digs for gold, receives his daily pittance, and sleeps contented; while those, for whom he labours, convert their good to mischief; making abundance the means of want. O shame! shame! Had fortune given me but a little, that ...
— The Gamester (1753) • Edward Moore

... Bud Shoop is a fighter, with a record for gettin' what he goes after. And that this same Bud Shoop is as honest as the day is long. Now, I've seen some mighty short days when I was tradin' hosses. And then this here stingin' lizard goes to work and digs up my deputy number over to Sterling and sets the papers to printin' as how it was me, with the help of a few parties whose names are of no special ...
— Jim Waring of Sonora-Town - Tang of Life • Knibbs, Henry Herbert

... ever giant's dungeon dug so deep, Was ever tyrant's fetter forged so strong, Was e'er such deadly poison in the draught The false wife mingles for the trusting fool, As he whose willing victim is himself, Digs, forges, ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... the public ghost on the stones of the village sanctuary; and every man who has a private ghost of his own does the same in his own sacred place. About two months afterwards there is another public sacrifice when the root crops generally have been dug; pig or fish is then offered; and a man who digs up his yams, or whatever it may be, offers his ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer

... day, Health that mocks the doctor's rules, Knowledge never learned of schools, Of the wild bee's morning chase, Of the wild-flower's time and place, Flight of fowl and habitude Of the tenants of the wood; How the tortoise bears his shell, How the woodchuck digs his cell, And the ground-mole sinks his well; How the robin feeds her young, How the oriole's nest is hung; Where the whitest lilies blow, Where the freshest berries grow, Where the ground-nut trails its vine, Where the wood-grape's clusters shine; Of the black wasp's ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various

... doesn't see why he should pay more for living at home than he'd pay in digs—though, as a matter of fact I don't know anyone who'd take him for as little as that, even for only ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith

... use, "perhaps those big instruments of war are just as well up there, where they are seen, and not heard or felt. Man is the only creature, I fancy, who, not content with what powers of destruction nature has given him, cuts down trees from the forest, digs iron from the mine, sets the furnace glowing, and the engine working, to fashion means of killing his ...
— The Rambles of a Rat • A. L. O. E.

... know these things, because their grandpapas and grandmammas have told them so. Ants hatched from the egg artificially, or birds hatched in this manner, have all this knowledge by intuition, without the smallest communication with any of their relations. Now observe what the solitary wasp does; she digs several holes in the sand, in each of which she deposits an egg, though she certainly knows not (?) that an animal is deposited in that egg, and still less that this animal must be nourished with other animals. She collects a few green flies, rolls them ...
— Life and Habit • Samuel Butler

... spud being put through the hollow of the bone), smoothed to fit the hand. With the chisel end he cuts up his game and his food; the edge, being sloping, is drawn across the meat and divides it. With this end, too, he fashions his club and his traps, and digs up the roots he uses. The other end he runs into his meat as a fork, or thrusts it into the neck of his game to kill it and let out the blood, or with it stabs a ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies

... one of them one day, and I'm afraid I never shall. I was talking to the old man who digs graves, the other day; the first part of the verse doesn't fit me, and the last doesn't fit him—at least he said so. I wonder if both ...
— Odd • Amy Le Feuvre

... mud or earth road is usually only wide enough for a couple of coolies to pass, and in this province, as it is often necessary (especially in the Yuen-nan-fu district) for one cart to pass another, the farmer, to prevent trespass on his crops, digs around them deep ditches, resembling those which are dug for the reception of gas mains. In the rainy season the fields are drained into the roads, which at times are constantly under water, and beyond Yuen-nan-fu, ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle

... illustration, it will be remembered by all students of GOLDSMITH'S Animated Nature, that this amiable quadruped invariably exercises his risibles when he is crunching the bones of some other less truculent quadruped. It is "solitary, cruel, and untamable, digs its food out of graves," cachinnating the while like a thousand or fifteen hundred of brick. There are other ravenous beasts in the world; but this one is peculiar in that he laughs over his work, which is also ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 4, April 23, 1870 • Various

... abrupt way; "of which truth Clothes are but one example: and surely if we consider the interval between the first wooden Dibble fashioned by man, and those Liverpool Steam-carriages, or the British House of Commons, we shall note what progress he has made. He digs up certain black stones from the bosom of the earth, and says to them, Transport me and this luggage at the rate of file-and-thirty miles an hour; and they do it: he collects, apparently by lot, six hundred and fifty-eight miscellaneous individuals, ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle

... of Columbus was an Irishman named William, from the County Galway. And another was an Englishman named either Arthur Laws or Arthur Larkins. The Spanish names for both these men look very queer, and only a wise scholar who digs among names and words could have found out what they really were. But such a one did find it out, and it increases our interest in the discovery of America to know that some of our own northern blood—the Irishman and the Englishman—were in the ...
— The True Story of Christopher Columbus • Elbridge S. Brooks

... to line his burrow, and lies upon it, the clumsy sybarite, for a luxurious couch. Alas, however, for the helplessness of crabs, and the rapacity and cunning of all-appropriating man! The spoil-sport Malay digs up the nest for the sake of the fibre it contains, which spares him the trouble of picking junk on his own account, and then he eats the industrious crab who has laid it all up, while he melts down the great lump of fat ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen

... sickles or horns; nor does the springing power seem to depend on the development of the bosses. They are far more developed in an eagle than a robin; but you know how unpardonably and preposterously awkward an eagle is when he hops. When they are most of all developed, the bird walks, runs, and digs well, ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin

... Sam, he digs a stone out'n the road with the toe of his shoe, and kind of grins to himself, still looking sheepish. But he says he opinionates he been ...
— Danny's Own Story • Don Marquis



Words linked to "Digs" :   plural, quarters, excavation, living quarters, lodgings, plural form



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