from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
noun Any of various hand tools, typically having a threaded shank and cross handle, used for boring holes in wood or ice.
noun A drill bit.
noun A machine having a helical flange attached to a rotating shaft, used for drilling and boring or as a conveyor of loose material.
noun The rotating shaft and flange of such a machine, considered as a single unit.
transitive verb To drill, bore, or convey using an auger.
from The Century Dictionary.
noun An instrument for boring holes larger than those bored by a bit or gimlet.
noun An instrument for boring the soil.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
noun A carpenter's tool for boring holes larger than those bored by a gimlet. It has a handle placed crosswise by which it is turned with both hands. A pod auger is one with a straight channel or groove, like the half of a bean pod. A screw auger has a twisted blade, by the spiral groove of which the chips are discharge.
noun An instrument for boring or perforating soils or rocks, for determining the quality of soils, or the nature of the rocks or strata upon which they lie, and for obtaining water.
noun a bit with a cutting edge or blade like that of an anger.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
noun A carpenter's tool for boring holes larger than those bored by a gimlet.
noun A snake or plumber's snake (plumbing tool).
noun A tool used to bore holes in the ground, e.g. for fence posts
noun A hollow drill used to take core samples of soil, ice, etc. for scientific study.
verb To use an auger; to drill a hole using an auger.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
noun hand tool for boring holes
noun a long flexible steel coil for dislodging stoppages in curved pipes
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
[Middle English, from an auger, alteration of a nauger, from Old English nafogār, auger; see nobh- in Indo-European roots.]
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
From Middle English nauger, from Old English nafogār ("nave drill"), from Proto-Germanic *nabōgaizaz. Cognate with Dutch avegaar.
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Examples
The auger was a twisted pile of scrap in the ditch and the tractor was headed home unscratched.
While the lint is going through this process, the seeds, being heavier and smaller, draw to the bottom of the gins, fall into an auger which is operated by a belt, and then are dropped into a conveyor and carried to the seed pile or houses.
Poor scores for removal speed, throwing distance, and clearing plow piles like at the end of driveways put it at dead-last among single-stage snow blowers, which use a rubber-tipped auger to scoop up and throw snow while helping move the machine.
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