delf

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   historical and dialectal: Delftware or other glazed earthenware, especially plates, dishes, and tea things

   The cottage cupboard held several blue-and-white plates of delf.

2. 2
   noun

   dialectal, chiefly British: an excavation such as a mine, quarry, pit, ditch, or drain

   Workers enlarged the old delf to extract building stone.

The pottery sense is a spelling variant of delft, named for Delft in the Netherlands and its glazed earthenware. The excavation sense is unrelated: it descends from Middle English delf and Old English gedelf, 'a digging or something dug,' from delfan, 'to dig,' the ancestor of delve.

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