Dug is the past tense of dig, which means to break up and move earth or other material. When you dug a hole in your backyard yesterday, you used a shovel to scoop out dirt. When archaeologists say they dug up ancient pottery, they mean they carefully excavated soil to uncover artifacts buried long ago.

The word works for any kind of digging: a dog that dug under the fence, a gardener who dug a trench for planting, or miners who dug deep tunnels searching for gold. You might say “We dug through boxes in the attic” when you searched intensively through stored items, even though you weren't literally moving dirt.

Sometimes people use dug informally to mean they really enjoyed something: “I really dug that concert” means you loved it. The main meaning remains straightforward: dug describes the action of digging that already happened.