excavate
/ˈɛkskəveɪt/verb
to hollow out by digging or removing material
From Latin ex (out) + Latin cavus (hollow).
Lineage
ex
cav-
The story
Picture a Roman looking into a newly opened hollow in the earth: that simple image sits inside Latin cavus, “hollow” or “cave.” Add ex, “out,” and excavāre becomes a wonderfully literal instruction—“hollow out.” English adopted the participial form excavātus in the late sixteenth century, with attestations from the 1590s and 1599, so the word arrived wearing the grammatical clothing of something already dug out. Its relatives still preserve the geological picture: a cavity is a hollow space, while concave means “hollowed inward” and convex means “swelled outward.” The ordinary verb is respectable, but a later Urban Dictionary usage gives it an explicitly sexual slang sense; that is a modern pun on digging, not a separate historical origin. Whenever you excavate, you are still—linguistically speaking—making a cave from the outside in.
Modern usage
An explicit sexual slang use based on the idea of digging or hollowing out.
- Heard in
- sexual slang · internet slang
- See
- Urban Dictionary