Delve vs Burrow - What's the difference?
delve | burrow |
To dig the ground, especially with a shovel.
* 1381 , John Ball
* Dryden
*
(ambitransitive) To search thoroughly and carefully for information, research, dig into, penetrate, fathom, trace out
* 1609-11 , Shakespeare, Cymbeline, King of Britain
* 1943 , Emile C. Tepperman, Calling Justice, Inc.!
(ambitransitive) To dig, to excavate.
* ca. 1260 , Jacobus de Voragine, The Golden Legend
* 1891 , , The White Company , chapter IV
A pit or den.
* 1590 , Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene , III.iii:
A tunnel or hole, often as dug by a small creature.
* 1922 , (Margery Williams), (The Velveteen Rabbit)
(mining) A heap or heaps of rubbish or refuse.
A mound.
An incorporated town.
(Webster 1913)
As verbs the difference between delve and burrow
is that delve is to dig the ground, especially with a shovel while burrow is to dig a tunnel or hole.As nouns the difference between delve and burrow
is that delve is a pit or den while burrow is a tunnel or hole, often as dug by a small creature.delve
English
Verb
- When Adam dalf and Eve span, / Who was then a gentleman?
- Delve of convenient depth your thrashing floor.
- I got a spade from the tool-house, and began to delve with all my might - it scraped the coffin; I fell to work with my hands; the wood commenced cracking about the screws; I was on the point of attaining my object, when it seemed that I heard a sigh from some one above, close at the edge of the grave, and bending down.
- I cannot delve him to the root.
- She was intensely eager to delve into the mystery of Mr. Joplin and his brief case.
- And then they made an oratory behind the altar, and would have dolven for to have laid the body in that oratory ...
- Let him take off his plates and delve' himself, if ' delving must be done.
Synonyms
* (to dig the ground) dig * (to search thoroughly) investigate, researchDerived terms
* delver * indelveNoun
(en noun)- the wise Merlin whylome wont (they say) / To make his wonne, low vnderneath the ground, / In a deepe delue , farre from the vew of day [...].
Anagrams
* ----burrow
English
Noun
(en noun)- But very soon he grew to like it, for the Boy used to talk to him, and made nice tunnels' for him under the bedclothes that he said were like the ' burrows the real rabbits lived in.