How to Use excavator in a Sentence

excavator

noun
Definition of excavatornext
  • The excavators found ancient tools at the site.
  • The man had crashed through a fence and then used the arm of the excavator to lift the car.
    — San Diego Union-Tribune, 18 Dec. 2022
  • Excavator sales in the first four months of the year rose to the highest since 2012.
    — Bloomberg.com, 23 May 2017
  • The man offloaded the excavator and then used the machine and chains to lift up the trailer ramps.
    — Clifford Ward, Chicago Tribune, 10 Aug. 2023
  • To the east, an excavator worked along the beach near a handful of sunbathers.
    — Chelsey Lewis, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 20 Feb. 2019
  • The dirt is laid out into two rows, the 11 semis come in, and excavators go down each row and load the dirt into the semis.
    — Zach Horrall, Indianapolis Star, 22 Mar. 2018
  • Some images show an excavator at the site, and at least one shows a white bus.
    — New York Times, 16 Mar. 2022
  • Crews then used an excavator to comb through the garbage, according to the AP.
    — Abigail Adams, Peoplemag, 30 Nov. 2022
  • The car struck a construction excavator on the north side of Sprague Road.
    — cleveland, 18 June 2020
  • The excavator driver is the latest to be caught in the crossfire.
    — Jack Crosbie, Rolling Stone, 3 Sep. 2022
  • The officer noticed paint chips on the excavator that matched that of the car.
    — cleveland, 18 June 2020
  • An email message left for the lead excavator of the tomb was not returned.
    — oregonlive, 17 Jan. 2023
  • The two put on hard hats and surveyed the jumble of cranes and excavators and drills in motion around them.
    — Joshua Yaffa, The New Yorker, 29 May 2017
  • The man was detained while driving an excavator on the Greek side of the border.
    — Fox News, 5 May 2018
  • An excavator used to load the truck hit the wooden mats, which went toppling.
    — Nisa Khan, Detroit Free Press, 4 Sep. 2020
  • An excavator pulled down a wall of the decades-old temple to help people flee.
    — Ashok Sharma, ajc, 31 Mar. 2023
  • And because the lanes run across a shallow bridge, an excavator can’t be used to fix the erosion.
    — Susanne Rust, Los Angeles Times, 14 Mar. 2023
  • Fans dropped by to check it out, and sure enough, there was an excavator digging away at the structure.
    — Tom Uhler, star-telegram.com, 4 May 2017
  • Ensure an excavator was kept more than two feet from the trench’s edge.
    — Staff Report, Hartford Courant, 11 July 2024
  • In April, an excavator hit a transmission tower in the south, and the lights went out again across the island.
    — Jenny Vrentas, SI.com, 23 May 2018
  • Prince William used an excavator, and both his sons wanted to help out.
    — Town & Country, 9 May 2023
  • Construction teams of 7,000 workers with armies of trucks and excavators dug and scraped around the clock to complete the project.
    — Amy Qin, New York Times, 10 Mar. 2020
  • Three of them approached three excavators and, one by one, locked themselves to the machines, bringing the day’s work to a halt.
    — Katie Myers, WIRED, 20 Jan. 2024
  • The job went to Steve Smith, who brought his excavator over from his house, on part of the old Tenney property.
    — New York Times, 27 May 2021
  • When the excavator ignored the directive the next day, MetroNet fired it.
    — John Tuohy, Indianapolis Star, 3 Sep. 2017
  • The excavator started by removing the siding and then the first level of the house.
    — Emily Shapiro, ABC News, 28 Dec. 2023
  • An excavator struck the north side of the pavilion first, sending dust and debris flying through the air.
    — Eleanor McCrary, The Courier-Journal, 26 July 2023
  • At 8:33, the Volvo excavator clenched its metal claw and punched into the roof of the back wing, near an exit.
    — Robert Wilonsky, Dallas News, 3 June 2020
  • An excavator removed rubble to uncover cars and houses, as rescuers stood by to see if there are any survivors.
    — Fedja Grulovic, Reuters, 5 Oct. 2024
  • Down below, excavators, cranes and graders were building a bluff where a new border wall will join an existing 30-foot wall the Trump administration spent billions of dollars to erect.
    — Gustavo Arellano, Los Angeles Times, 16 Oct. 2024

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'excavator.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Last Updated: