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say it: ek-skuh-VAY-shuhn
excavation is a noun meaning "the act of digging". It carries 4 recorded senses.
the act of digging
“there's an interesting excavation going on near Princeton”
the site of an archeological exploration
“they set up camp next to the dig”
archeology
the act of extracting ores or coal etc from the earth
Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.
Definitions, synonyms and semantic relations for excavation come from Princeton University’s WordNet. The pronunciation comes from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. Commonness is measured against a corpus of everyday English. Full sources and licences.