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Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
shovel
I.noun
COLLOCATIONS FROM OTHER ENTRIES
steam shovel
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ A 47-year-old man died after an accident involving a 17-ton loading shovel at the Redland Aggregates site at Barham.
▪ Did he think that would work if she got him gloves and a rake and shovel?
▪ He went into the nearest town and bought a proper shovel.
▪ In tears, I fetched my father who went to work with a shovel and retrieved most of the contents.
▪ Its workers did this the hard way, with sweat and shovels.
▪ The shovel itself had metal teeth so it could bite into a pile of dirt.
▪ When dusk had come, Wade put his shovel aside and moved down the slope to the dock.
II.verb
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ They shoveled dirt back into the grave.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ All business has to do is back a truck up to the money bin and shovel out the appropriate amount.
▪ And no wonder new purchases of bond funds are a pittance compared with what people shovel into stock funds.
▪ Kathy shoveling rain off a sidewalk.
▪ Men sit silently at the bar, pulling on Buds, shoveling quarters into the video poker machines set in the countertops.
▪ Most people shovel without claiming spaces.
▪ Parents are cleaning, shoveling, and even teaching to aid schools.
▪ You might as well take money and shovel it down the drain.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Shovel

Shovel \Shov"el\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Shoveledor Shovelled; p. pr. & vb. n. Shoveling or Shovelling.]

  1. To take up and throw with a shovel; as, to shovel earth into a heap, or into a cart, or out of a pit.

  2. To gather up as with a shovel.

Shovel

Shovel \Shov"el\, n. [OE. shovele, schovele, AS. scoft, sceoft; akin to D. schoffel, G. schaufel, OHG. sc?vala, Dan. skovl, Sw. skofvel, skyffel, and to E. shove. [root]160. See Shove, v. t.] An implement consisting of a broad scoop, or more or less hollow blade, with a handle, used for lifting and throwing earth, coal, grain, or other loose substances.

Shovel hat, a broad-brimmed hat, turned up at the sides, and projecting in front like a shovel, -- worn by some clergy of the English Church. [Colloq.]

Shovelspur (Zo["o]l.), a flat, horny process on the tarsus of some toads, -- used in burrowing.

Steam shovel, a machine with a scoop or scoops, operated by a steam engine, for excavating earth, as in making railway cuttings.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
shovel

Old English scofl, sceofol "shovel," related to scufan (see shove (v.)), from Proto-Germanic *skublo (cognates: Old Saxon skufla, Swedish skovel, Middle Low German schufle, Middle Dutch shuffel, Dutch schoffel, Old High German scuvala, German Schaufel). Shovel-ready, with reference to construction projects, is attested by 2006.

shovel

mid-15c., from shovel (n.). Related: Shoveled; shoveling. Compare German schaufeln, verb from noun.

Wiktionary
shovel

n. 1 A hand tool with a handle, used for moving portions of material such as earth, snow, and grain from one place to another, with some forms also used for digging. Not to be confused with a spade, which is designed solely for small-scale digging and incidental tasks such as chopping of small roots. 2 (context US English) A spade. vb. 1 To move materials with a shovel. 2 (context transitive figuratively English) To move with a shoveling motion.

WordNet
shovel
  1. n. a hand tool for lifting loose material; consists of a curved container or scoop and a handle

  2. the quantity a shovel can hold [syn: shovelful, spadeful]

  3. a fire iron consisting of a small shovel used to scoop coals or ashes in a fireplace

  4. a machine for excavating [syn: power shovel, excavator, digger]

  5. [also: shovelling, shovelled]

shovel
  1. v. dig with or as if with a shovel; "shovel sand"; "he shovelled in the backyard all afternoon long"

  2. [also: shovelling, shovelled]

Wikipedia
Shovel (disambiguation)

Shovel may refer to:

  • Shovel, a tool for lifting and moving loose material
  • Power shovel, a bucket equipped machine, usually electrically powered, used for digging and loading earth or fragmented rock material, the modern equivalent of steam shovels
  • Steam shovel, a steam-powered excavating machine designed for lifting and moving material such as rock and soil
  • Intellipedia shovel
  • The Shovel, Cowley, a Grade II listed public house at Iver Lane, Cowley, London
Shovel (album)

Shovel is the second studio album by noise rock band Feedtime, released in 1986 by Aberrant Records.

Shovel

A shovel is a tool for digging, lifting, and moving bulk materials, such as soil, coal, gravel, snow, sand, or ore. Shovels are used extensively in agriculture, construction, and gardening.

Most shovels are hand tools consisting of a broad blade fixed to a medium-length handle. Shovel blades are usually made of sheet steel or hard plastics and are very strong. Shovel handles are usually made of wood (especially specific varieties such as ash or maple) or glass-reinforced plastic (fibreglass).

Hand shovel blades made of sheet steel usually have a folded seam or hem at the back to make a socket for the handle. This fold also commonly provides extra rigidity to the blade. The handles are usually riveted in place. A T-piece is commonly fitted to the end of the handle to aid grip and control where the shovel is designed for moving soil and heavy materials. These designs can all be easily mass-produced.

The term shovel is also applied to larger excavating machines called power shovels, which are designed for the same purpose, namely, digging, lifting, and moving material. Modern power shovels are the descendants of steam shovels. Loaders and excavators (such as backhoes) perform very similar work, etically speaking, but they are not classified as shovels emically.

Hand shovels have been adapted for many different tasks and environments. They can be optimized for a single task or designed as cross-over or compromise multitaskers. Examples are given under "Types".

Usage examples of "shovel".

I started to laugh, but the bartender shouted to another young man shoveling quarters into a nearby slot.

Not so much because he de-sired order, for Brine believed chaos to be the way of the world, but because he did not wish to make life difficult for his cleaning lady, who came in once a week to dust and shovel ashes from the fire-places.

A shovel, with damp-looking humus still on its blade, leaned against the stone.

Then Dallas would shovel the opened oysters onto picnic tables covered with newspapers and the perfume of those washed-down mollusks gave off a silvery, slightly metallic musk of a rained-on acre of spartina.

Klyucharyov returns to the overground armed with the things he needs: a pickaxe, a crowbar, a shovel, some candles.

Thure looked curiously and excitedly around him at the various groups of miners hard at work with their picks or shovels or pans or other washing machines.

This Plater began to shovel overboard, working with furious energy, as though combating a hated enemy.

Io, George Munster flowed gradually to the shovel, extended a pseudopodium, seized the shovel, and with it managed to dig a symbolic amount of soil.

Paraetonium to Siwa to here, hundreds of kilometers beyond human thought or action, half a mile down, where the gigantic claw diggers had ceased their abrading, the two of us with simple pick and shovel, standing on the last thin layer of compacted dirt and rock that roofed whatever great shadowy structure lay beneath us, a shadow picked up by the most advanced deep-resonance-response readings, verified on-site by proton free-precession magnetometry and ground-penetrating radar brought in from the Sandia National Laboratory in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in the United States.

The barrier was manned by a dozen field hands armed with staffs sharpened to a point, a single metal-tipped spear, shovels, and scythes.

Every adult in camp, not just the soldiers had some kind of weapon in hand, shovels, picks, pitchforks, sharpened stakes, and many a makeshift club.

When I got outside, however, Steve was busy shovelling sand while Philip stood watching.

Only Tom Silva owned a good old-fashioned bubba truck complete with shovel and gun rack.

He gave her a presumably affectionate skite on the Mount of the Moon and began shoveling eggs and bacon on his plate.

He shoveled more squirmers into his mouth, then clamped his lips shut and began using one of his thick, blunt fingers to poke in the squirmer parts that were still sticking out.