digger A person who digs. In the 17th century, the Diggers were a group of radical dissenters formed in England in 1649 as an offshoot of the Levellers, believing in a form of agrarian communism in which common land would be made available to the poor; they first asserted their principles at St George's Hill, Walton-on-Thames, in Surrey in 1649, where they began to dig up the land and plant crops. The Diggers were suppressed by the authorities, and their leader, Gerrard Winstanley (fl. 1648–52) imprisoned.

In Australia and New Zealand, digger is an informal term for a man, especially a private soldier. The term derived (in the early 20th century) from digger ‘miner’, reinforced by association with the digging of trenches on the battlefields.

Digger ★★½ 1994 (PG)

Digger (HannByrd) arrives at a Pacific Northwest island to stay with relatives, including his Grandma (Dukakis) who's being romanced by the fun-loving Arthur (Nielsen). He makes friends with another youth who turns out to have a terminal heart ailment. 92m/C VHS . Adam Hann-Byrd, Olympia Dukakis, Leslie Nielsen, Joshua Jackson, Barbara Williams, Timothy Bottoms; D: Robert Turner; W: Rodney Gibbons; M: Todd Boekelheide.