• IPA: /dɛlv/

delve (delves, present participle delving; past delved, past participle delved)

1. (intransitive) To dig the ground, especially with a shovel.
   • 1381, John Ball (priest)

     When Adam dalf and Eve span, / Who was then a gentleman?

   • Delve of convenient depth your thrashing floor.

   • 1845 October – 1846 June​, Ellis Bell [pseudonym; Emily Brontë], Wuthering Heights: A Novel, volume XXIX, London: Thomas Cautley Newby, publisher, […], published December 1847, OCLC 156123328 ↗:

     I got a spade from the tool-house, and began to delve with all my might - it scraped the coffin; I fell to work with my hands; the wood commenced cracking about the screws; I was on the point of attaining my object, when it seemed that I heard a sigh from some one above, close at the edge of the grave, and bending down.

2. (ambitransitive) To search thoroughly and carefully for information, research, dig into, penetrate, fathom, trace out
   • 1609-11, Shakespeare, Cymbeline, King of Britain

     I cannot delve him to the root.

   • 1943, Emile C. Tepperman, Calling Justice, Inc.!

     She was intensely eager to delve into the mystery of Mr. Joplin and his brief case.

3. (ambitransitive) To dig, to excavate.
   • ca. 1260, Jacobus de Voragine, The Golden Legend

     And then they made an oratory behind the altar, and would have dolven for to have laid the body in that oratory ...

   • 1891, Arthur Conan Doyle, The White Company, chapter IV

     Let him take off his plates and delve himself, if delving must be done.

• (to dig the ground) dig
• (to search thoroughly) investigate, research

• dolven

• French: creuser
• German: graben, buddeln (colloquial)
• Portuguese: cavar
• Russian: рыть
• Spanish: cavar, excavar

• French: fouiller
• German: untersuchen, erforschen, ergründen, eintauchen, wühlen, befassen
• Italian: investigare
• Russian: ры́ться
• Spanish: investigar, ahondar

delve (plural delves)

1. (now rare) A pit or den.
   • 1590, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, III.iii:

     the wise Merlin whylome wont (they say) / To make his wonne, low vnderneath the ground, / In a deepe delue, farre from the vew of day [...].

   • 1995, Alan Warner, Morvern Callar, Vintage 2015, p. 75:

     I put the clods on top the delve and gave it all a good thumping down with my feet.

• stonedelf