"excavate" in the verb sense
1. excavate, unearth
recover through digging
"Schliemann excavated Troy"
"excavate gold"
2. excavate, dig up, turn up
find by digging in the ground
"I dug up an old box in the garden"
3. excavate
form by hollowing
"Carnegie had a lake excavated for Princeton University's rowing team"
"excavate a cavity"
4. excavate, dig, hollow
remove the inner part or the core of
"the mining company wants to excavate the hillside"
Source: WordNet® (An amazing lexical database of English)
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