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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
Carly Tagen-Dye, People.com, 7 May 2025
The film premiered at last year’s Cannes Film Festival and delves into the conflict between a visionary artist seeking a utopian future and those entrenched in a regressive status quo, driven by greed, special interests and partisan conflict.
—Justin Kroll, Deadline, 5 May 2025
But Sinners also delves into the loss of spirituality among many Black Americans.
—Cheyanne M. Daniels, The Hill, 5 May 2025
The book delves into Twain’s early years working odd jobs—steamboat pilot, miner, journalist, just to name a few—before the release of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.
—Shannon Carlin, Time, 1 May 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 11 May. 2025.
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