Synonyms of excavating

excavating

verb

present participle of excavate

as in digging

to hollow out or form (something) by removing earth

workmen are excavating a long tunnel that will eventually replace the aboveground expressway

Synonyms & Similar Words

• digging
• shoveling
• dredging
• grubbing
• burrowing
• mining
• scooping
• delving
• clawing
• quarrying
• spading
• digging in

Antonyms & Near Antonyms

• filling (in)
• smoothing (out or over)

Example Sentences

Recent Examples of excavating

The roughly six-mile-wide (10-kilometer-wide) asteroid struck Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula, excavating the Chicxulub crater and vaporizing enormous quantities of rock. — Stefanie Waldek, Space.com, 1 Aug. 2026

The team tried excavating another unknown soldier from an unrelated case just a day before, but were unsuccessful. — Hope McKenney, NPR, 1 Aug. 2026

When not excavating and eating Rosenthal’s bread and cheese, the men rehearse for a musical comedy performance featuring a chorus line of men in drag. — Thomas Doherty, HollywoodReporter, 18 July 2026

Construction workers are currently restoring and building rail links between Oxford and Cambridge, and as part of that work, archaeologists are excavating trenches across southern England. — Andrea Margolis, FOXNews.com, 17 July 2026

Rather than excavating the find himself, Wiśniewski reported it to heritage officials, who recovered the artifact using professional archaeological methods. — Ashley Vega, PEOPLE, 16 July 2026

Archaeologists excavating Xultun, a large Mayan site in northeast Guatemala, have identified the name of an 8th-century Mayan astronomer-mathematician who wrote a calendrical formula on an interior wall of a small masonry building. — Leigh Anne Miller, ARTnews.com, 14 July 2026

Hurst hopes more context can be gleaned by further studies of the many other plaster scraps—which bear different handwriting from at least one other scribe—and by excavating more of the lost city. — Joseph Howlett, Scientific American, 13 July 2026

The investment of time and money put into excavating and polishing a skeleton such as Gus would not be possible, according to Hatton, without the prospect of a high-value sale. — Jacopo Prisco, CNN Money, 13 July 2026