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Albrecht Dürer's pen-and-ink drawing of a man using an auger, ca 1496 (Musée Bonnat, Bayonne, France)

An auger is a device for moving material or liquid by means of a rotating helical flighting. The material is moved along the axis of rotation. A drill bit uses this mechanism to remove shavings from a hole being drilled. For some uses the helical flighting is enclosed in a tube, for other uses the flighting is not encased.

An Archimedes screw is essentially an auger that lifts water from a lake or river.

Snowblowers use an auger to move snow towards an impeller where it is thrown into the discharge chute. Combine harvesters use both enclosed and open augers to move the unthreshed crop into the threshing mechanism and to move the grain into and out of the machine's hopper. A Zamboni uses an auger to remove loose ice particles from the surface of the ice.

Plumbers use a plumber's snake, a flexible auger, to remove obstructions from pipes.

The grain auger is used in agriculture to move grain from trucks and grain carts into grain storage bins. A grain auger may be powered by an electric motor, a tractor through the power take-off, or sometimes an internal combustion engine mounted on the auger. The helical flighting rotates inside a long metal tube moving the grain upwards. On the lower end, a hopper receives grain from the truck or grain cart. A chute on the upper end guides the grain into the destination location.

The modern grain auger of today's farming communities was from the mind of Peter Pakosh. The "Versatile" grain mover that Peter first began his Hydraulic Engineering Company with was not an elevator or paddle system on a chain but a screw-type auger with a minimum of moving parts.

At Massey Harris, young Pakosh approached the design department back in the 1940s with his idea of the corkscrew system for an auger. Peter was scolded and told that his idea was unimaginable and that once the auger aged and bent that the metal on metal would "start fires all across Canada". He was then quickly dismissed.

Peter would go on to design, build and sell tens of thousands of his augers and see it become the standard design for the modern grain auger.

Auger on a small tractor, making post-holes

An auger is also used for digging post holes and can be manually turned, handheld powered by an electric or fuel motor, or attached to a tractor as shown.

• Screw conveyor