What does digged mean?
"Digged" is the archaic past tense and past participle of the verb "dig", which means to break up, turn over, or remove earth or similar material using a spade, the hands, or a tool. In this form it appears throughout older English writing — most famously in the King James Bible and in Shakespeare — where phrases like "the well which they had digged" were entirely natural. Over time, however, the irregular form "dug" displaced it in standard usage, so that today "digged" is encountered almost exclusively in historical, biblical, or dialect contexts, though it occasionally appears playfully or for archaic flavor. The verb itself is ancient, tracing back through Middle English to Old English "dician" and related Germanic roots that also gave us words like "ditch" and "dyke". For readers of older literature, recognizing "digged" as simply an older way of saying "dug" removes what can look like a grammatical oddity; for writers, it remains available as a deliberately antique or rustic choice, but it would be nonstandard in everyday modern prose.
verb"Digged" is an archaic or dialectal past tense and past participle of the verb "dig", meaning to break up, move, or hollow out earth or other material with a tool, hands, or a machine. It has largely been replaced in standard modern English by the form "dug".
- (archaic past tense/past participle of "dig") To have broken up, moved, or hollowed out soil, sand, or other material using a spade, hands, or tools.
- (archaic past tense/past participle of "dig") To have made or deepened a hole or channel by removing material.
"The old farmer remembered when he had digged the well by hand, long before the village had running water."
"They digged a trench around the camp to keep out the floodwaters."
"The miners had digged deeper than anyone before them in search of silver."
Shakespeare's gravediggers and the King James Bible both said "digged" — the everyday "dug" only won out centuries later.
Reviewed by Deb Chak, Editor. AI-assisted content curated by RJS Tech Solutions LLP.
Etymology of digged
The verb "dig" first appears clearly in Middle English (around the 14th century), probably from a Norse or Danish source related to Old Norse "dikka", meaning to dig or embank. Its older past tense was formed with the regular -ed ending, giving "digged", which was standard through Early Modern English — hence its frequent appearance in the King James Bible and in Shakespeare. The irregular form "dug" arose by analogy with verbs like "stick/stuck" and eventually supplanted "digged" in standard English, leaving "digged" as a marked archaic or dialectal variant. The same Germanic root family also produced related words such as "ditch" and "dyke" (or "dike").
Related word forms
How digged is actually used
"Digged" is not used in ordinary modern speech or writing; it survives mainly in older texts such as the King James Bible, Shakespeare, and dialect literature. In contemporary English, use "dug" as the past tense and past participle of "dig". Encountering "digged" is usually a sign of historical, literary, or regional register rather than current standard usage.
Easily confused with digged
"Dug" is the standard modern past tense of "dig", while "digged" is the older, now chiefly archaic or biblical form of the same verb.