Word Confusion: Dredge versus Drudge

Plural for the noun: dredges
Gerund: dredging

third person present verb: dredges
Past tense or past participle: dredged
present participle: dredging

Plural for the noun: drudges
Gerund: drudging

Third person present verb: drudges
Past tense or past participle: drudged
Present participle: drudging

Verb, intransitive:
Ring up or clear something from a river, harbor, or other area of water with a dredge ¹

Verb, transitive:
Clean out the bed of (a harbor, river, or other area of water) by scooping out mud, weeds, and rubbish with a dredge ¹

• Ring up or clear something from a river, harbor, or other area of water with a dredge
• To search for a submerged object with or as if with a dredge
• Drag
• [dredge something up] Bring to people’s attention an unpleasant or embarrassing fact or incident that had been forgotten

[Cooking] Sprinkle or coat food with a powdered substance, typically flour or sugar ²

A person who works in a routine, unimaginative way

Verb, intransitive:
[Archaic] Do hard, menial, or dull work

We’ll have to make room in the budget for a dredge.

The dredge needs to be replaced.

Verb, intransitive:
They start to dredge for oysters in November.

To begin, it is important that everyone realize that this boat was originally built to dredge for oysters.

As such, there is limited information on this topic, although as noted, most recreational fishers dive rather than dredge for scallops.

Verb, transitive:
They’re dredging the harbor now.

Mud was dredged out of the harbor.

I don’t understand why you had to dredge up this story.

“Pete, dredge up the truth before we’re sucked under.”

Next, dredge the bananas with sugar and cinnamon.

Don’t forget to dredge the chicken.

Tapestries, to me, had always been dim and dowdy things ravaged by time that no one but an academic drudge could like.

You have actually started to enjoy being a workaholic drudge.

I felt myself very much the household drudge, and Stephen was getting all the glittering prizes.

The orphaned Cinderella is the household drudge for her wicked stepmother and stepsisters.

Verb, intransitive:
Her husband was drudging in the smoke of London.

I am drudging at the writing table.

He was for a time obliged by poverty to drudge as a parliamentary reporter.

After an unhappy childhood and some years drudging in London, Ireland liberated Trollope from asthma and gave him the impetus to start writing.

They needed a reason for drudging through practices with no hope for a postseason.

1. Late 15th century, as a noun, originally a dredge-boat and perhaps related to the Middle Dutch dregghe meaning grappling hook.
2. Late 16th century, from the obsolete dredge meaning sweetmeat, mixture of spices, from the Old French dragie, perhaps via Latin from the Greek tragēmata meaning spices.