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Digger vs Shovel - What's the difference?

digger | shovel |

As nouns the difference between digger and shovel

is that digger is a soldier from australia or new zealand while shovel is a hand tool with a handle, used for moving portions of material such as earth, snow, and grain from one place to another, with some forms also used for digging not to be confused with a spade, which is designed solely for small-scale digging and incidental tasks such as chopping of small roots.

As a verb shovel is

to move materials with a shovel.

digger

English

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.

    Derived terms

    * gold digger, golddigger * gravedigger * mini digger

    shovel

    English

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • A hand tool with a handle, used for moving portions of material such as earth, snow, and grain from one place to another, with some forms also used for digging. Not to be confused with a spade, which is designed solely for small-scale digging and incidental tasks such as chopping of small roots.
  • (US) A spade.
  • Derived terms

    * put to bed with a shovel * steamshovel * snow shovel * coal shovel * shoveler * shovelful

    Verb

  • To move materials with a shovel.
  • The workers were shovelling gravel and tarmac into the pothole in the road.
    After the blizzard, we shoveled the driveway for the next two days.
    I don't mind shoveling , but using a pickaxe hurts my back terribly.
  • (figuratively) To move with a shoveling motion.
  • * {{quote-news
  • , year=2011 , date=December 29 , author=Keith Jackson , title=SPL: Celtic 1 Rangers 0 , work=Daily Record citation , page= , passage=The keeper then seemed to claw it out with fabulous reflexes only for TV replays to show the ball had most probably crossed the line before Forster had shovelled it away.}}

    See also

    * scoop

    Anagrams

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