excavate.
To make a hole in (something); to hollow.
Meaning & usage
To make a hole in (something); to hollow.
To remove part of (something) by scooping or digging it out.
To uncover (something) by digging.
Where this word comes from
First attested in 1599, from Latin excavātus (“hollowed out”), perfect passive participle of excavō (“to hollow out”) (see -ate (verb-forming suffix) and -ate (adjective-forming suffix)), from ex (“out”) + cavō (“to hollow out, pierce”), from cavus (“cave, hole”) + -ō (verb-forming suffix). Participial usage up until Early Modern English.
Made hollow.
excavated, hollowed out
Where this word comes from
First attested in 1599, from Latin excavātus (“hollowed out”), perfect passive participle of excavō (“to hollow out”) (see -ate (verb-forming suffix) and -ate (adjective-forming suffix)), from ex (“out”) + cavō (“to hollow out, pierce”), from cavus (“cave, hole”) + -ō (verb-forming suffix). Participial usage up until Early Modern English.
Any member of a major grouping of unicellular eukaryotes, of the clade Excavata.
Where this word comes from
From a substantivization of Latin excavātus through the associated taxon's name (Excavata), see -ate (noun-forming suffix) and Etymology 1 for more.
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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.
Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.