the.com/dredge
the slow violence of scooping a riverbed to keep ships from kissing the bottom.
means To scoop, dig, or drag material up from the bottom of a body of water — or, by extension, to coat food lightly in flour or sugar, and figuratively to haul up something long buried.
from The watery sense and the kitchen sense are likely two different words wearing the same coat. The 'scrape the riverbed' meaning is related to an old word for the dragging-net or sledge used to harvest oysters, possibly a cousin of 'drag' itself. The cooking sense — to 'dredge' meat in flour — comes from a quite separate Middle English 'dredge' or 'drage,' a term for a mixture of grains or a sweetmeat, borrowed from Old French 'dragie' (sugared spice), the same root that eventually gives us 'dragée,' those hard candied almonds. So one dredge drags the depths; the other dusts your chicken.
- buried history
- Dredging unearths shipwrecks, bombs, and ancient bones routinely.
- land maker
- Dubai's palm islands were dredged into existence.
- kitchen cousin
- To dredge also means coating food in flour.
- toxic stir
- Disturbing seabeds releases buried mercury and pollutants.
- endless job
- The Suez Canal needs constant dredging to stay open.
hopper dredge portland — u.s. army corps of engineers vessel that maintains navigation channels in major ports like portland, oregon
suez canal dredging — continuous dredging operation that removed 336 million cubic meters to deepen the canal to 72 feet by 2023
amazon river dredging — brazilian mining operations that dredge gold from riverbeds, causing ecological damage in the amazon basin