delve

To dig into the ground, especially with a shovel.

Delve of convenient depth your thrashing floor.

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.

To dig; to excavate.

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

They dolve a grave beneath the arrow / And covered it with brere.

To search thoroughly and carefully for information, research, dig into, penetrate, fathom, trace out

I cannot delve him to the root.

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

A pit or den.

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 [...].

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

A surname from Old English.