Delf

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A specific location or site characterized by being dug out for the extraction of resources, typically minerals or clay, used often in industrial applications
2. An excavation that serves as a pit or area from which natural materials are removed for construction or manufacturing purposes
3. An area dug into the ground used for removing minerals or other resources for industrial use

Etymology: The noun "delf" is the older, now mostly dialect, cousin of "delve," and its meaning is literal: a hole dug in the ground. Its Middle English forms covered a remarkable range of digging, from a quarry or clay pit to a ditch, a trench, a canal, and even a grave or a pitfall. What unites them is the act itself, since the word came into English from the same Old English root that gave us the verb "delve," meaning to dig. That root goes back to a Proto-Germanic verb meaning simply "to dig," shared across the Germanic languages. In Old English the noun could name either the thing dug or the digging itself, so a single word covered both the trench and the labour of making it. Over the centuries the sense narrowed in most English speech, while the verb kept its general meaning of digging and later gained the figurative sense of probing into a subject.

Synonyms: clay, ceramic