Words with unusual meanings

By Our Special Correspondent

Sometime ago we considered a few very common words that have deceptively unusual meanings. Words like ‘buy’ and ‘sing’ were on that list. We will go back to that theme briefly today to consider a very interesting word that can also be quite useful in many informal situations. Dig: the common meaning of dig is perfectly clear. When you dig, you remove the surface layers of something—such as soil or sand. For instance, when you dig a well, you remove earth and stone to uncover water. Digging necessarily involves exploration based on insufficient information. When you start digging the well, you do not actually know where the water is. Similarly, in a mine, people who are digging for coal are removing layers of earth before they can even see the coal. This connotation of digging gives us expressions such as ‘digging for information.’ In detective stories, for instance, the hero often needs to make friends with a suspect and dig for information regarding their alibi etc. when you dig for information, you ask indirect questions in such a way that the other person does not suspect you are looking for information. If you directly asked for information, at the ‘Enquiry’ counter of a railway station, for example, that would not be considered digging.

But an even more interesting connotation of the word ‘dig’ occurs in slang, informal contexts where it takes on an entirely different meaning. Let’s take an example to start with. Talking about a music concert to your friends, you might say, ‘I watched the Bryan Adams concert on TV the other day; I really dig his music.’ In this case, you are certainly saying that you enjoy the music. But ‘dig’ has connotations beyond simply liking something. If you like a song from a new movie for example, that could be just plain enjoyment. But ‘dig’ combines liking something with understanding it, so you cannot dig every song you like. If you come across a new composer, someone who has a district style and perhaps mixes a variety of musical traditions, or perhaps a singer who sings about specific themes such as love or patriotism, you can say ‘I really dig his music.’ Conversely, if you like a singer but are not a passionate fan, you could say, ‘She is a good singer, but I don’t really dig her music.’

The use of ‘dig’ in this sense is slang and informal, and mostly popular among young people. When you dig something, you appreciate and enjoy it, have a positive opinion about it, and truly understand it at a level where it feels like an expression of your own emotions opinions, or personality.