Did you know?
Digging Up the History of Delve
We must dig deep into the English language’s past to find the origins of delve. The verb traces to the early Old English word delfan meaning “to dig.” For centuries, there was only delving—no digging—because dig didn’t exist until much later; it appears in early Middle English. Given dig and delve’s overlapping meanings today, is the phrase “dig and delve” (as in the line “eleven, twelve, dig and delve,” from the nursery rhyme that begins “one, two, buckle my shoe”) redundant? Not necessarily. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, in some local uses, dig was the term for working with a mattock (a tool similar to an adze or a pick), while delve was reserved for work done using a spade. Although delve has a history of use for literal digging, nowadays the term is often applied to carefully researching or examining something, as in “delving into the past.”
Examples of delve in a Sentence
Spencer Kornhaber, The Atlantic, 17 Oct. 2025
That’s 16 days of public silence and private plotting — 16 days of preparing for a case management conference and pondering motions and strategizing for the discovery process and delving into every facet of this year-long case that has no end in sight.
—Jon Wilner, San Diego Union-Tribune, 16 Oct. 2025
Debuting in the fest’s Envision competition, the film delves deep into the invisible world of organisms that emerge during the decay of organic matter.
—Georg Szalai, HollywoodReporter, 16 Oct. 2025
The book also delves into the band’s early days touring the world, Bottum’s struggles with heroin addiction, and living through the height of the AIDS crisis.
—Jon Blistein, Rolling Stone, 14 Oct. 2025
See All Example Sentences for delve
Cite this Entry
“Delve.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/delve. Accessed 22 Oct. 2025.
Copy Citation
Share