From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishdredgedredge /dredʒ/ verb 1 [intransitive, transitive]TTWTEC to remove mud or sand from the bottom of a river, harbour etc, or to search for something by doing this They dredged for oysters.2 [transitive + with]DF to cover food lightly with flour, sugar etc → dredge something ↔ up→ See Verb table
Examples from the Corpus
dredge• Fearing more floods, the state had the river dredged.• That dredging is now behind schedule.• Others specialize in dredging operations required for bridges and dams or for harbors.• The scheme involves dredging the main channel of the Medway estuary to provide a storage base for import-export cargoes.• It must have been seeing her reading Tennyson that had dredged up an old forgotten quotation.• Many distorted fragments of meteoritic iron are later dredged up from the area where the wreckage fell.Origin dredge (1500-1600) Perhaps from Old English dragan “to pull” 