These verbs all describe the use of implements in moving a substance from one place to another. Scoop suggests a twisting or probing motion, often involving a good deal of effort, used to press into a substance and lift part of it out: to scoop ice cream out of a container. In informal use scoop is used also to mean to gather into heap, especially hastily: He scooped up the coins, thrust them in his pocket and ran way.

Dig is the most general word of this group, and can be applied to any vigorous act of pressure or penetration: He dug a ringer into my ribs menacingly. In its primary sense, however, dig means to break up, turn up or remove earth, as with an implement, claws or fingers.

• Bandicoots keep digging up the lawn; He dug at the ground with the heel of his shoe; The workmen dug up the street with deafening pneumatic drills.

Dig , unlike scoop , suggests a straight thrust into a substance, and, whereas scoop emphasizes the process of lifting out, dig usually emphasizes the going in.

• The cook scooped out some sugar and sprinkled it over the cake; to dig up buried treasure.

Also, scoop suggests open or shallow indentations in a surface, whereas dig can apply to any sort of excavation: digging miles of underground tunnels.

Shovel suggests a laborious, regularly repeated digging motion with a long-handled implement. Shovelling is hard work, and typically involves the movement of something which does not easily yield or which is heavy, such as earth, rock, snow and the like. The tools used to shovel vary in size from children’s toys to huge, toothed, power-driven devices used on construction sites for moving mounds of earth and boulders; therefore, the word shovelling in isolation indicates very little about the quantity shovelled .

Spoon and ladle point to the transfer of liquids from one vessel to another, as from a pot to a bowl. Spooning suggests more diminutive portions than ladling , which can indicate gross, careless or hasty disposal of a substance: to spoon out medicine in carefully measured quantities; ladling out soup to a mob of hungry people. Bail , unlike the other words here considered, indicates a particular situation and purpose, that of emptying a boat of water to keep it from becoming swamped: After each wave, all hands started bailing with buckets, pans, shoes ?anything that would hold water.