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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



... [is silent for an instant, turns abruptly around, looks down the gorge, gets up and takes the spade]. You aren't sitting safely, Ingolf. I will deepen the hole, so that you can have something to push your feet against. [Digs.] ...
— Hadda Padda • Godmunder Kamban

... ants, beetles, bugs, caterpillars, and spiders. He is also a Seed Sower, though in being so he and his brothers, without intentional mischief, scatter the seeds from the watery white berries of the poison ivy. He always digs for himself a nest in some partly decayed tree, and never takes long journeys, but moves about only in ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues

... sort of a chap misses the big opportunities just because he chooses to build up a reputation for being exclusive. He digs himself a hole and crawls into it and pulls the hole in after him. We can safely imagine him treating the members of his family as though they were servants, and his employees as though they were slaves. He may succeed in small things but ...
— Laugh and Live • Douglas Fairbanks

... The urge of the average man is toward construction, domination, mastery. The urge of the average woman is toward mothering, protection, nurture. The masculine characteristics find ready sublimation in a career; the man builds bridges, digs canals, harnesses mountain streams, conquers pests, overcomes gravity, brings the ends of the earth together by "wireless" or by rail; he provides for the weak and the helpless—his own progeny—or, incarnated in the body of a Hoover, he gives ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury

... board, he whistles as well as smiles, and then the black boys laugh, and life on the trim ship is more buoyant than ever. He goes down into the doll's-house galley backwards, smiling. Now, it is no smiling matter to be jambed up against a hot stove on a hot day when the seas run high and the yacht digs her crescent nose into the blue and washes her own decks with Neptune's suds. But "Jimmy" will bob up again in due season with a plate of hot cakes or, perhaps, even cool cakes—and the smile. He has been smiling to the oven, ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield

... herself cosey or not, as she chooses, in an abandoned hole. About her comfort he seems shamefully unconcerned. Intent only on his own, he drills a perfectly round hole, usually on the underside of a limb where neither snow nor wind can harm him, and digs out a horizontal tunnel in the dry, brittle wood in the very heart of the tree, before turning downward into the deep, pear-shaped chamber, where he lives in selfish solitude. But when the nesting season comes, ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan

... 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, he places the cloth over the heart in the coffin. Oh, they are a sweet outfit, ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby

... in general:—on poor rough Esau, who sails Jacob's ships, digs Jacob's mines, founds Jacob's colonies, pours out his blood for him in those wars which Jacob himself has stirred up— while his sleek brother sits at home in his counting-house, enjoying at once ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley

... the fresh air, and Mrs. Sterling is the quiet sunshine that does the work, I fancy. David only digs about ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott

... his herds; horses, cattle, sheep, camels. In our sense he owns no land, but if he digs a well, which, I believe, he rarely does, he has certain rights over it, and his claims to the water and grass near his yurt should be respected. His friends have to admit that the Mongol is lazy. His chief duty is to keep an eye on his herds, but mostly they take care of themselves. ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall

... beginning at the surface of the ground and digging downward, the woodchuck begins at the bottom of the hole and digs up toward ...
— Dave Darrin on Mediterranean Service - or, With Dan Dalzell on European Duty • H. Irving Hancock

... 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 ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)

... he raves, from his wide nostrils flies A fiery steam, and sparkles from his eyes. So fares the bull in his lov'd female's sight: Proudly he bellows, and preludes the fight; He tries his goring horns against a tree, And meditates his absent enemy; He pushes at the winds; he digs the strand With his black hoofs, and spurns the ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil

... 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, mingles, ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

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

... becomes necessary," "When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for a people to separate—" upon her typewriter, over and over and over again, while she listened to Captain Morton selling young Mr. Van Dorn a patent churn, and from the winks and nods and sly digs and nudges the Captain distributed through his canvass, it was obvious to Miss Mauling that affairs in certain quarters ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White

... of clam, with a thin shell, and out of one end of it the clam sticks a long thing, like a rubber tube. And when the clam digs a hole for himself down in the sand or the mud he thrusts this tube up to the top, and through it he sucks down ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Cousin Tom's • Laura Lee Hope

... drove from their houses, in the winter, they take straight to their burrows in the bank, where they kin be sure of gittin' their heads above water to breathe. Then, the Injuns jest drive stakes down in front of the holes,—an' there they have 'em, every one. They digs down into the burrows, an' knocks Mr. Beaver an' all the family on ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts

... by preference inhabits open places, dry, arid, uncultivated places, exposed to the sun. She lives generally—at least when full-grown—in underground passages, regular burrows, which she digs for herself. These burrows are cylindrical; they are often an inch in diameter and run into the ground to a depth of more than a foot; but they are not perpendicular. The inhabitant of this gut proves that she is at the same time a skilful hunter and an able engineer. It was ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre

... governors and governed rejoice. But the more they work to-day, the more idle will they be hereafter; the more they laugh, the more they shall weep. Under the rule of property, the flowers of industry are woven into none but funeral wreaths. The laborer digs his own grave. ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon

... seems to be, and the fickle goddess will perhaps remain faithful to him longer than to many others, for he is busy from early till late, and is his father's right-hand. At least he won't fall into one of the pits Fate digs for mortals." ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... devil clerk, amiably. "I'm too useful. I do your dirty work for you and leave you always with clean hands to show. Who stirs up damage suits? Joe. Who digs up the willing witness? J. Pelman. Who finds skeletons in respectable closets? Joey. Who is the go-between? Joseph. I'm trusty too, because I dare not be otherwise. And because I like the work. I like to see you skin 'em, I do. ...
— Copper Streak Trail • Eugene Manlove Rhodes

... to scent the breeze as I entered the valley. The Lawrences have gone,—father and son forever,—and the other son lazily digs in the earth to live. A new young widow rents out their cabin to fat Reuben. Reuben is a Baptist preacher now, but I fear as lazy as ever, though his cabin has three rooms; and little Ella has grown into a bouncing woman, and is ploughing corn on the ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois

... to and fro in various directions in chase of their prey. Presently there was a great commotion in the water ahead, and two huge animals appeared struggling together. "Why, they are fighting," cried Willy. "What tremendous digs they give into each other's necks with their ...
— The Voyages of the Ranger and Crusader - And what befell their Passengers and Crews. • W.H.G. Kingston

... Falcon had 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

... the other end is attached a handle. On an upright near the cylinder is mounted a sort of drum. The membrane of the drum carries a needle, which, when the membrane is agitated by the air-waves set up by human speech, digs into a sheet of tinfoil wrapped round the cylinder, pressing it into a helical groove turned on the cylinder from end to end. This construction is the first phonograph ever made. Thomas Edison, the "wizard of the West," devised it in 1876; and from this rude parent have descended the beautiful ...
— How it Works • Archibald Williams

... "stinging" when applied to insects—- and this case is no exception—means piercing the object with the egg-layer (ovipositor) and depositing the egg. Some insects occasionally use the ovipositor merely for defense. The curculio has an especially interesting method of laying her egg. First she digs a hole, in which she places the egg and pushes it well down. Then with her snout she makes a crescent-shaped cut in the skin of the plum, around the egg. This mark is shown in Fig. 154. As this peculiar cut is followed by a flow of gum, you will always be able to recognize the ...
— Agriculture for Beginners - Revised Edition • Charles William Burkett

... he 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 ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith

... the actors are all so good about helping me and putting up with my antics (though they have their own, Danu digs!) that I sometimes think I must be related to one of them—a distant cousin or sister-in-law (or wife, my God!), because I've checked our faces side by side in the mirrors often enough and I can't find any striking family resemblances. Or maybe I was even an actress in the company. The least important ...
— No Great Magic • Fritz Reuter Leiber

... which fled before us. But this trench warfare, this warfare in which one stays for days and days in the same position, in which ground is gained yard by yard, in which artifice tries to outdo artifice, in which each side clings to the ground it has won, digs into it, buries itself in it, and dies in it sooner than give it up! What warfare for cavalry! We have devoted ourselves to it with all our hearts, and the chiefs who have had us under their orders ...
— In the Field (1914-1915) - The Impressions of an Officer of Light Cavalry • Marcel Dupont

... 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

... to Mr Salteena when we are in a quiver about Ethel, and turning to Ethel when we are quite uneasy about Mr Salteena. This authoress of nine is flirting with her readers all the time. Her mind is such a rich pocket that as she digs in it (her head to the side and her tongue well out) she sends up showers of nuggets. There seldom probably was a novelist with such an uncanny knowledge of his characters as she has of Mr Salteena. The first line of the tale etches ...
— The Young Visiters or, Mr. Salteena's Plan • Daisy Ashford

... crossed which is really uncrossable. That should not be snatched from the foe which the foe would be able to recover. One should not seek to dig at all if by digging one would not succeed in getting at the root of the thing for which one digs. One should never strike him whose head one would not cut off. A king should not always act in this way. This course of conduct that I have laid down should be pursued only in seasons of distress. Inspired by the motive of doing thee good I have said this for instructing thee as to how ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown

... 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 Complete Angler 1653 • Isaak Walton

... by day he lugs that bag with him yet spends all his time reading the papers and rarely using the books he carries. His pipe always goes out just as he reaches his station; frantically he tries to fill and light it before the train stops. Sometimes he digs deeply into the bag and brings out a large slab of chocolate, which he eats with an air of being slightly ashamed of himself. The oddities of this person do not amuse us any the less because he happens ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley

... together hard, gets a fresh grip on his ox-goad, digs his heels into the ground for a good hold, and mutters to himself, "I guess they are about four hundred short." And he smites, left and right, up and down, hip and thigh, with his strange weapon. And a great victory comes to the ...
— Quiet Talks on Service • S. D. Gordon

... all a-hopin' to hear at the last day; an' the po' laborer thet digs a good ditch'll have thess ez good a chance to hear it ez the man that ...
— Sonny, A Christmas Guest • Ruth McEnery Stuart

... plaintive face. Constant walking, digging, and pumping has broken his health and ruined his nervous system. His joyless life has driven him to drink and smoke more than is good for him, and his hand often shakes as he digs ditches. He has not the strength to work as the others can, in fact, as Hamlin Smith has said, "A can do more work in one ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock

... dissipate and the effects of which must be so terrible, where is the excuse of Providence? Is it not true that grace failed man here? God, whom faith represents as a tender father and a prudent master, abandons us to the fatality of our incomplete conceptions; he digs the ditch under our feet; he causes us to move blindly: and then, at every fall, he punishes us as rascals. What do I say? It seems as if it were in spite of him that at last, covered with bruises from our journey, ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon

... of shape, and smoothing down his sea-weed clothes; the fishes all went slowly along in their regular places, only the little fishes behind would teaze the dolphins, and the sword-fish looked as stately as the old fellow could, and gave some serious digs at the dolphins whenever they showed signs of being unruly; and lastly, two or three flying-fish shot off in advance of the rest, and the procession ...
— Seven Little People and their Friends • Horace Elisha Scudder

... 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, on my way to Tali-fu, ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle

... 'John digs round the roots, you know. In goes his blundering spade, through roots, bulbs, everything that hasn't got a good show above ground, turning 'em up cut all to slices. Only the very last fall I went to move some tulips, when I found every bulb upside down, and the stems crooked round. ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy

... on his blade began to cling from dampness. "When I digs a well," he remarked boastingly, "what I want is water, and that's what I gets. As soon as it's deep enough I'll wall her up with rocks and take the longest drink that man ever pulled off, that is to say, when it was nothing ...
— Lahoma • John Breckenridge Ellis

... 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 International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various

... form, seeking him, but failing to see what lies nearly under their feet. They pass on, talking of the night's startling event. Cushing dares not rise again. Yet the swamp must be gained, and speedily. Still flat on his back, he digs his heels into the soft earth, and pushes himself inch by inch through the rushes, until, with a warm heart-throb of hope, he feels the welcome dampness of ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... 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

... only one opening like a lip at the top. The nest does not look comfortable, but it is, for inside it is lined with the softest white feathers, whereon are laid the pearly-white eggs. The sand-martin, the house-martin's cousin, prefers the side of a cliff. He digs into a cliff or sandbank a long tunnel quite as long as your arm, and just big enough for him to pop in and out with comfort. At the very far end of this in the warm darkness he puts bits of straw and feathers to make a bed, and here ...
— The Children's Book of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton

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

... of his soul digs a well. It would be a pleasant thing if each of us left a school, a well, or something like that, so that life should not pass away into eternity without leaving a trace ...
— Note-Book of Anton Chekhov • Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

... Italians against their oppressors. Others have no business at all; they are just giving their oddity a continental airing. At home they cultivate themselves at leisure and with greater elaboration. Beckford builds towers, Portland digs holes in the ground, Cavendish, the millionaire, lives in a stable, eats nothing but mutton, and amuses himself—oh, solely for his private delectation—by anticipating the electrical discoveries of half a century. Glorious eccentrics! Every age is enlivened ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley

... Afterwards he may come back to find out what frightened him. Sit perfectly still, and he rises on his hind legs for a look and a long sniff to find out who you are. Jump at him with a yell and a flourish the instant he appears, and he will hurl chips and dirt back at you as he digs his toes into the hillside for a better grip and scrambles away whimpering like ...
— Wood Folk at School • William J. Long

... at fantastic and whimsical variance; one never in debt, the 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, in truth, Gid had been an apt pupil under the Major), and ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read

... sense, No weak neglect, no labour'd eloquence; Goodness and wisdom are in all his ways, The rude revere him and the wicked praise. Upon humility his virtues grow, And tower so high because so fix'd below; As wider spreads the oak his boughs around, When deeper with his roots he digs the solid ground. By him, from ward to ward, is every aid The sufferer needs, with every care convey'd: Like the good tree he brings his treasure forth, And, like the tree, unconscious of his worth: Meek as the poorest Publican is he, And strict as lives the straitest Pharisee; Of both, ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe

... with the same material, so as to render it impervious to the rain. The seeds from the cones form its chief food, and it extracts them with its curious bill, the two parts of which cross each other. It grasps the cone with its foot, after the fashion of a parrot, and digs into it with the upper part of its bill, which is like a hook, and forces out the ...
— Among the Trees at Elmridge • Ella Rodman Church

... a ledge of quartz-rock and digs down the way the ledge goes. He puts up a windlass, worked by hand, over the well-like hole he has dug out, and hoists the ore out in buckets. But he soon finds, as the hole or shaft goes deeper, that he ...
— Stories of California • Ella M. Sexton

... these remarks Josh 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

... write an anti-Darwinian article; you would do it so confoundedly well. I have sometimes amused myself with thinking how I could best pitch into myself, and I believe I could give two or three good digs; but I will see you — first before I will try. I shall be very impatient to see the Review. (The first number of the new series of the 'Nat. Hist. Review' appeared in 1861.) If it succeeds it may really do ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin

... 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 burrows ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 180, April 9, 1853 • Various

... know. "It won't be for very long, dear old girl. You must find another situation. Till then a lodging. I know a place where a man I know used to have digs. A jolly old landlady. I'll raise ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson

... seat, seizes the man's nose, and jerks his head round between his knees, pulling his mouth open (there is nothing that opens the mouth quicker than a sharp upward jerk of the nose) with a rude jollity that sets the spectators in a roar. Down he goes into the cavern, and digs away for a quarter of a minute, the man the while as immovable as a stone image, when he holds up the bloody tooth. The patient still persists in sitting with his mouth stretched open to its widest ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... 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

... 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 his pastime. Now, if you wish to hear a Boy laugh—a horse-laugh, a giant-laugh—just ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 4, April 23, 1870 • Various

... was a "welcome home," for a dozen of the nearer friends were there to hear the chapters of their hero's life. Jim was in fine feather and he told of their Chicago life as none other could have done, with jest and sly digs at himself and happy tributes to the one who had held his hand when comradeship ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton

... column, to which he contributed almost daily for twelve years, comprehended many sly digs and gentle scoffings at those of his unhappy fellow citizens who became notorious, through his instrumentality, in their devotion to old book-shelves and auction sales. And all the time none was more assiduous than this same good-natured cynic in running down a musty prize, ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field

... it." The words of R. Joshua. R. Akiba said, "as we have no right to injure public property, so we have no right to benefit it." "What shall he do with the dust?" "He may heap it up in his own field like manure, and so also when he digs a well, or a cistern, or ...
— Hebrew Literature

... the morning, the German Minister saw one of the ordinary hooded Peking carts trotting carelessly along, with the mule all ears, because the carter was urging him along with many digs near the tail. But it was not the cart, nor the carter, nor yet the mule, which attracted His Excellency's immediate attention, but the passenger seated on the customary place of the off-shaft. For a ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale

... Prince over him, "O knight, the bravest, best, Thy plumes are dyed in hero's blood— Henceforth they are my crest!" And still they wave o'er England's crown, And teach the young and brave, When all is lost but honor, then Valor digs Honor's grave. ...
— Harper's Young People, October 19, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... the fields the moucher searches the banks and digs out primrose 'mars,' and ferns with the root attached, which he hawks from door to door in the town. He also gathers quantities of spring flowers, as violets. This spring [1879], owing to the severity of the season, there ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies

... Malkin), behaving like a staid wife of old standing, she well knew that she was a mystery for Louis. She was the source of his physical comfort, the origin of the celestial change in his life which had caused him to admit fully that to live in digs was "a rotten game"; but she was also, that morning, a most sinister mystery. Her behaviour was faultless. He could seize on no definite detail that should properly disturb him; only she had woven a veil between herself ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett

... cannot fail to observe, if you mark the glee with which she listens to something the young Member near her mutters somewhat unintelligibly in her ear (for his speech is rather thick from some cause or other), and how playfully she digs the handle of a fork into the arm with which he detains her, ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens

... 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 ...
— Just Folks • Edgar A. Guest

... genial smile And retires to snooze for a little while, To dream of billies and dirks and slings, The calaboose and such pleasant things. The college dig now digs for bed With bunged-up eyes and aching head, Conning his lesson o'er and o'er, Till an audible melodious snore Tells that he's going the kingdom through Where Greek's at a discount ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson

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

... know? An alluvial 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 ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller

... minute, and pulling his curly head down on her breast, she murmured, "There—don't c'y, never matter, dear bedder—s'eel get well!" while Kitty lifted up poor Gawow, who was indeed in a pitiable condition. Walter had ornamented her face with several deep digs of the scissors, which made her look as if she had been to the wars and come home with a number of bullet holes in her. Then, not satisfied with this—what does that monkey Wawa do but rip up her whole ...
— Funny Little Socks - Being the Fourth Book • Sarah. L. Barrow

... Jacks have got to laugh and laugh about I'm sure the worms don't see the joke when Jacky digs them out. ...
— A Book for Kids • C. J. (Clarence Michael James) Dennis

... expose the hypocrisy of those who would misrepresent Tom's real attitude toward church and school. While Mark Twain is determined to present life faithfully as he sees it, he dislikes as much as any Puritan to see evil triumph. In his stories, wrongdoing usually digs its own grave. ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck

... Henry IV., Montmorency, the Colignys, she was forced to put forth the rarest fine qualities, the most essential gifts of statesmanship, under the fire of the Calvinist press. These, at any rate, are indisputable facts. And to the student who digs deep into the history of the sixteenth century in France, the figure of Catherine de Medici stands out as that ...
— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various

... is in front. The Indian does not paddle on one side and then on the other. He uses, as a rule, the left hand side. He grasps the blade right hand at the top, left hand a foot or more down, and then reaching the paddle forward, he digs it into the water with a strong, firm grip, keeping it perpendicular and drawing it aft. When the paddle is abreast his erect body, he suddenly turns the blade so as to bring the flat against the body of the canoe. This acts at once as a lee board and a rudder. With these ...
— Healthful Sports for Boys • Alfred Rochefort

... must be stealing his dinner;[165] and the actual fact is that the great mass of men, calling themselves Christians, do actually live by robbing the poor of their bread, and by no other trade whatsoever: and the simple examination of the mode of the produce and consumption of European food—who digs for it, and who eats it—will prove that ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin

... 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 cunning way, Mason ...
— Twilight Stories • Various

... laugh: the old Countryman who brings the asps to Cleopatra makes us smile at least. But the Grave-digger scene does not come at a moment of extreme tension; and it is long. Our distress for Ophelia is not so absorbing that we refuse to be interested in the man who digs her grave, or even continue throughout the long conversation to remember always with pain that the grave is hers. It is fitting, therefore, that he should be made decidedly humorous. The passage in Antony and Cleopatra is much nearer to the passage in Macbeth, and seems to have been forgotten ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley

... American swears a round oath, spits on his hands, and pitches in to shovel the "slide" out again. He isn't belittling the disasters; it is merely that he knows the canal has got to be dug and goes ahead and digs it. That is the greatest thing on the Zone. Amid all the childish snarling of "Spigoties," the back-biting of Europe, the congressional wrangles, the Cabinet politics, the man on the job,—"the Colonel," ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck

... 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

... hear you speak thus, Miriam," said Hilda, whose natural and cheerful piety was shocked by her friend's gloomy view of human destinies. "It seems to me that there is no chasm, nor any hideous emptiness under our feet, except what the evil within us digs. If there be such a chasm, let us bridge it over with good thoughts and deeds, and we shall tread safely to the other side. It was the guilt of Rome, no doubt, that caused this gulf to open; and Curtius filled it up with his heroic self-sacrifice ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... sequence of talk, they are exposed by blasting, like fossil teeth of old Deluge sharks in monotonous walls of our chalk-quarries. Nor are these the less welcome for the violence of their introduction among a people glad to be set burning rather briskly awhile by the most unexpected of digs in the ribs. Dan Merion, to give an example. That was Dan Merion's joke with the watchman: and he said that other thing to the Marquis of Kingsbury, when the latter asked him if he had ever won a donkey-race. And old Dan is dead, and we are the duller for it! which leads to the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... a-heah, Brudder 'Bijah," said Grandison, his eyes sparkling with righteous indignation, "dat's too much 'to 'spec' ob a man who's got ter work all day to s'port his wife an' chillun. I digs, an' I plows, an' I plants, an' I hoes. But all dem things ain't 'nuf ter make apple-trees grow in my gyardin like as dey ...
— Amos Kilbright; His Adscititious Experiences • Frank R. Stockton

... 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 oriole's nest is ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [December, 1897], Vol 2. No 6. • Various

... Montague was buried in his work, and he caught but faint echoes of the storm that rumbled in the financial world. It was a thing which he thought of with wonder in future times—that he should have had so little idea of what was coming. He seemed to himself like some peasant who digs with bent head in a field, while armies are marshalling for battle all around him; and who is startled suddenly by the crash of conflict, and the bursting ...
— The Moneychangers • Upton Sinclair

... we speak them, too, The world is fill'd with words of men, But still is priz'd the precious hue, Of golden thoughts from tongue or pen; And he who digs and brings to light A lovely thought, a pearly gem, 'Twill surely shine with lustre bright, For men, to cheer and ...
— Canada and Other Poems • T.F. Young

... on a deal faster if that lazy brown-skin Ohoo would work harder. Just look at him. He digs up that bit o' ground as if he was paid by the number o' minutes he took to do it. I had to give him a taste of a rope's end this morning, but it don't seem to have ...
— The Lonely Island - The Refuge of the Mutineers • R.M. Ballantyne

... my share of the compliment; but why say 'only digs'? That is a most important part of the work: I'm afraid you ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott

... moiety of revenge. Down into the veldtschoon, up the bare, hairy legs, over the hips, round the waist, over the lean ribs, along the spine, under the arms, round the neck, over the whole man they go, as the Mongolian hordes will some day go over the Western world. And each one digs his tiny prongs into the smarting, burning, itching poor devil on top of their homestead. He shifts a leg the hundredth part of an inch. The guard on the left gives his bandolier a warning twist, and glances along the long brown barrel that nestles ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales

... plead another engagement," asserted Miss Ross, her dark eyes flashing a challenge. She is a lovely girl, but digs up the turf terribly. ...
— John Henry Smith - A Humorous Romance of Outdoor Life • Frederick Upham Adams

... feeble things at best, We cannot dig the grave ourselves. And so We call strong-limbed New Love to lay it low: Immortal sexton he! whom Venus sends To do this service for her earthly friends, The trusty fellow digs the grave so deep Nothing disturbs the dead laid there ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... me again! She digs her fingers into my throat! Hold her hands! Hold her hands! She will be the death ...
— Giles Corey, Yeoman - A Play • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... battles! The Allies victorious! The King and General Cialdini beat the Austrians at Palestro! 400 Austrians drowned in a canal! Anti-French feeling in Germany! Allgermine Zeiturg talks of conquest of Allsatia and Loraine and the occupation of Paris! [Vicious digs with a pencil through the above proper names.] Race for the Derby won by Sir Joseph Hawley's Musjid! [That's what England cares for! Hooray for the Darby! Italy be deedeed!] Visit of Prince Alfred to the Holy Land. Letter from our own Correspondent. [Oh! Oh! A West Minkville?] ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... faculties developed, with his independence of judgment, and his acquired habit of thinking for himself instead of leaning on precedent and borrowed wisdom, rides the dummy Government class with whip and spur. He lays on the lash here and digs in the rowels there, goading on his steed in any direction that chances to suit his purpose. He naturally places personal ambition in front of national expediency, because his political career is ...
— The Curse of Education • Harold E. Gorst

... food and are killed and eaten fresh by degrees. Their method of hunting the lizard is described by Mr. Wilson as follows: [66] "The lizard lives on grass, cannot bite severely, and is sluggish in his movements, so that he is easily caught. He digs a hole for himself of no great depth, and the easiest way to take him is to look out for the scarcely perceptible airhole and dig him out; but there are various ways of saving oneself this trouble. One, which I have ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell

... that of all the acts I have done in my life, my marriage with Kunda Nandini is the most erroneous. I admit it. By doing this I have lost Surja Mukhi. I was very fortunate in obtaining Surja Mukhi for a wife. Every one digs for jewels, but only one finds the Koh-i-nur. Surja Mukhi is the Koh-i-nur. In no respect can Kunda Nandini fill her place. Why, then, did I instal Kunda Nandini in her seat? Delusion, delusion; now I am sensible of it. ...
— The Poison Tree - A Tale of Hindu Life in Bengal • Bankim Chandra Chatterjee

... up there there is moss growing under the snow. And in the short summer other plants grow. During the long winter Snow White digs down through the snow to get these. He also eats the bark and twigs of little stunted trees. But big as he is, you have a cousin who is still bigger, the ...
— The Burgess Animal Book for Children • Thornton W. Burgess

... heap careful not to do nothin' to him to make him drop it, is inexcoosable to the verge of outrage. No rel'tive in the third or fo'th degree is jestified to assoome sech sooperiorities; an' Enright tells Texas so after Peets digs the lead out of the thick of ...
— Faro Nell and Her Friends - Wolfville Stories • Alfred Henry Lewis

... hearer is a very different man, and he sows far different seed. HIS SEED IS DIVINE TRUTH, AND HIS FIELD IS HIS OWN SPIRIT. He digs up the thorns and the thistles by the roots; destroys the serpents, and drives out the wolves and the foxes. In this way he mortifies the body of sin and crucifies the flesh with its affections and lusts. In a well prepared soil he plants the fig and the olive, the vine and the pomegranate. ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline

... At his own risk and peril, it analyzes and digs deep into its own bedazzlement. One might almost say, that by a sort of splendid reaction, it with it dazzles nature; the mysterious world which surrounds us renders back what it has received; it is probable that ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... present," he said, "I remember my friend, John Pyle, rather throwing it in my teeth that I had not worked for nothing; but I told him, 'Mr. Pyle, you do not know what you are talking about. We are all workers. The man who ploughs the field and who digs the hedge is a worker; but there are other workers in other stations of life as well. For myself, I can say that I have been a worker ever since I have been a boy.'... Then I told him that the office of judge was by no means a sinecure, ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles

... it, but it is not current money in the use of it, except we get nearer and nearer our home, heaven, by it. Another man may be sick too, and sick to death, and this affliction may lie in his bowels, as gold in a mine, and be of no use to him; but this bell, that tells me of his affliction, digs out and applies that gold to me: if by this consideration of another's danger I take mine own into contemplation, and so secure myself, by making my recourse to my God, who is ...
— Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions - Together with Death's Duel • John Donne

... 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 ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott

... except hali, or wet paddy land. When the land has been properly levelled and hoed, drains are dug about the field. A cultivator (generally a female), with a basket of seed potatoes on her back and with a small hoe in her right hand, digs holes and with the left hand drops two seed-potatoes into each hole. The holes are about 6 in. in diameter, 6 in. deep, and from 6 to 9 in. apart from one another. Another woman, with a load of manure in a basket on her back, throws a little manure over the seed in the hole, ...
— The Khasis • P. R. T. Gurdon

... an interesting short-tongued bee who lives in a house by herself. Her name is Andrena. She bores a hole in the ground, digging out a wide hallway. From this she digs side passages, each one ending in a little closed room. The walls of these rooms are hard and shiny, like porcelain. When Andrena finishes her house she makes a nourishing paste of nectar and pollen. Pollen is the yellow powder from flowers. You know bees, by carrying about ...
— Little Busybodies - The Life of Crickets, Ants, Bees, Beetles, and Other Busybodies • Jeanette Augustus Marks and Julia Moody

... ships that he has received from King Hjalprek Sigurd goes against the sons of Hunding, whom he slays, thereby avenging the death of his father. Regin has urged him to kill Fafnir and take possession of the hoard. On the Gnita Heath he digs a ditch from which, as the dragon Fafnir passes over it, he plunges the sword into his heart. The dying Fafnir warns him of the curse attached to the possession of the gold; also that Regin is to be guarded against. The latter bids him roast the heart of Fafnir. While doing so he burns ...
— The Nibelungenlied - Translated into Rhymed English Verse in the Metre of the Original • trans. by George Henry Needler

... fluency, and point that would have amazed their parents. The blow fell without warning. Stalky upset a form crowded with small boys among their own cooking utensils, McTurk raided the untidy lockers as a terrier digs at a rabbit-hole, while Beetle poured ink upon such heads as he could not appeal to with a Smith's Classical Dictionary. Three brisk minutes accounted for many silkworms, pet larvae, French exercises, school ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling

... to have emanated from the brain of the young Chinaman. His mental fingers opened to catch Leh Shin and lay hold on him, but they unclosed again, and Coryndon felt about him in the darkness that separates mind from mind. He knew the pitfall that a too evident chain of circumstances digs for the unwary, and he fell back from his own conviction, testing each link of the chain, still uncertain and still doubtful of what course he ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie

... reason, or instinctive life, Quite fails, there gold will prick the sluggard loon. It wakes the drowsy lounger of the East, Who lolls in sunshine idle as a gourd, To toil like Irish hodmen. Roused, he hears Coin ringing lively music; falls to work, And digs, and hews, and grinds: he sees, not far, Himself, a chief of horsemen richly clad, Armed with long spears and silver-halted blades, Seizing pachalic power by a swift blow. But labour, having brought him gold, brings fears. The weight of wealth has made his footfall staid; He longs for order, ...
— My Beautiful Lady. Nelly Dale • Thomas Woolner

... 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

... valuable vineyard land that has to be walled round and every portion economised. What is done is this: the owner digs a quarry in the surface; this forms a sort of pit accessible on one side, the stone taken from this being employed to fence round his property. Then, for his own dwelling, he cuts out chambers in the rock under his vineyard, looking ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould

... bushes and forests. It creeps on its bent fore-feet in quest of food—sliding along on its knees, and propelling itself forward by its hind legs. This habit will account for the callosities already mentioned. In this posture it digs up the ground, extracting therefrom the roots and bulbs (of which its food is supposed entirely to consist); for, fierce and hideous as its aspect may be, the wart-hog is less omnivorous than several other species of ...
— Quadrupeds, What They Are and Where Found - A Book of Zoology for Boys • Mayne Reid

... 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

... letters we get from Dr. Schliemann (interesting but fishy) about his excavations there in the far-off Homeric area, I notice cities, ruins, &c., as he digs them out of their graves, are certain to be in layers—that is to say, upon the foundation of an old concern, very far down indeed, is always another city or set of ruins, and upon that another superadded—and sometimes upon that still ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman

... were to blow at fire in hope to quench it; For who digs hills because they do aspire Throws down one mountain to cast up a higher. O my distressed lord, even such our griefs are; Here they're but felt, and seen with mischief's eyes, But like to groves, being ...
— Pericles Prince of Tyre • William Shakespeare [Clark edition]

... 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 ...
— The Cost of Shelter • Ellen H. Richards

... he swalloweth the ground, neither doth he 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 Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre

... "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

... say!" he hissed in dark passion. "You've gone too far, Gulden. Here's where I call you!... You don't get a gram of that gold nugget. Jim's worked like a dog. If he digs up a million I'll see he gets it all. Maybe you loafers haven't a hunch what Jim's done for you. He's helped our big deal more than you or I. His honest work has made it easy for me to look honest. He's supposed ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey

... weather so far shows no sign of improvement. From all quarters come complaints of the unusual prevalence of sleet at the higher levels. Racing-planes and digs alike have suffered severely—the former from unequal deposits of half-frozen slush on their vans (and only those who have "held up" a badly balanced plane in a cross wind know what that means), and the latter from loaded bows and snow-cased bodies. As a consequence, the ...
— With The Night Mail - A Story of 2000 A.D. (Together with extracts from the - comtemporary magazine in which it appeared) • Rudyard Kipling

... whenever he goes abroad he shall be accompanied everywhere by his clerk. We see that Mrs. Pepys plays with what appears to be triumphant skill and success the part of the jealous and avenging wife, and digs her little French heels remorselessly into her prostrate husband and her rival. Unfortunately, we do not know what the final outcome was, for a little later, owing to trouble with his eyesight, Pepys was compelled to ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... used by all the country people, is so low that the front part sweeps the snow before it, and thus ridges are quickly formed all across the road. Another sleigh following has to surmount the ridges, and of necessity digs down on the opposite side, and scoops out more of the snow. Sometimes, also, they slide off either on one side or the other, and thus a succession of hills or waves, as it were, are made with slides, which send the sleighs nearly off the road ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston

... INRI, and the rains have effaced the letters. At the foot of the cross, as on the real Golgotha, is a confused heap of skulls and bones which the indifferent grave-digger has thrown from the graves he digs, and there they will probably await, not the resurrection of the dead, but the coming of the animals to defile them. Round about may be noted signs of recent excavations; here the earth is sunken, there it forms a low mound. There grow in all ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal

... easy matter to catch an armadillo. It has a shell on its back, and into this it promptly retreats at the first sign of danger. It has a long, pointed snout and strong, sharp claws. It can dig a hole in the ground almost as fast as a man can dig with a pick and spade; so, when an enemy appears, it digs a hole and buries itself from sight. It is not a troublesome animal. It lives chiefly upon beetles, grubs and worms, which it hunts ...
— A Little Journey to Puerto Rico - For Intermediate and Upper Grades • Marian M. George

... Frank. "A pirate never digs the hole until he has his treasure at hand. To do so would prove him but a novice; wouldn't ...
— Two Little Confederates • Thomas Nelson Page

... 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 ...
— The World of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne



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



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