Noun

(en noun)

A person who works in a mine.

*{{quote-magazine, date=2014-04-21, volume=411, issue=8884, magazine=(The Economist)

, title= Subtle effects , passage=Manganism has been known about since the 19th century, when miners exposed to ores containing manganese, a silvery metal, began to totter, slur their speech and behave like someone inebriated.}}

An operator of ordnance mines and similar explosives.

A bird of one of four species of Australian endemic honeyeaters in the genus Manorina .

Noun

(en noun)

A large piece of machinery that digs holes or trenches; an excavator.

A tool for digging.

* 2009 , Sharon Bomgaars, The Best Clubhouse Ever , page 143,

The post hole digger did look ancient. I was pretty certain myself that it hadn?t dug any holes for a long, long time.

A spade (playing card).

One who digs.

* 1997 , Barbara J. Wrede, Civilizing Your Puppy , page 75,

You?ve tried the supposedly sure method of squirting the digger' with water from a hose, and that hasn?t worked.This step will discourage 99 percent of the ' diggers .

* 2005 , Gary R. Sampson, Dick Wolfsie, Dog Dilemmas: Simple Solutions to Everyday Problems , page 130,

Most retrievers are not inveterate diggers — that?s a trait usually reserved for other breeds like wire-haired terriers and schnauzers.

(Australia, obsolete) A gold miner, one who digs for gold.

* 1853 , (editor), Household Words , Volume 21, page 64,

A successful Australian digger — successful, not merely in siftings and washings, but bearing the title, and its best credentials, of a “nuggetter” ? came down from Forest Creek recently and took up his abode in a low lodging-house in Little Bourke Street, Melbourne.

(Australia, dated) An informal nickname for a friend; used as a term of endearment .

(Australia, informal) An Australian soldier.

* 1998 , Helen Gilbert, Sightlines: Race, Gender, and Nation in Contemporary Australian Theatre , page 191,

Costume played a key part in his differentiation from British soldiers as the Digger uniform came to embody Australian versions of masculinity and mateship.

* 2002 , Jeff Doyle, Jeffrey Grey, Peter Pierce, Australia's Vietnam War , page xxiii,

For many, the congruencies of the Anzac legend and the diggers who served in Vietnam were slight, too slight, and the legend seemed unable to accommodate them.

* 2004 , Lisanne Gibson, Joanna Besley, Monumental Queensland: Signposts on a Cultural Landscape , page 99,

Like many other Queensland communities, the workers from the North Ipswich Railway Workshops chose a statue of a soldier, or digger , to honour their fellow workers.