embankment
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English
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Etymology
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[edit]Noun
[edit]embankment (plural embankments)
- a long mound of earth, stone, or similar material, usually built for purposes such as to hold back or store water, for protection from weather or enemies, or to support a road or railway.
- 1886, anonymous author, California Legislature Journal Appendix[1]:
- The work to be done under these specifications consists in furnishing all materials and erecting a stone embankment, an earth embankment, and a wharf. The stone embankment will contain about 216,000 tons of stone; the earth embankment about 285,000 cubic yards of broken stone, sand, or other suitable material; and the wharf will contain 501,320 feet of timber, and 802 piles, together with the requisite quantity of cast iron mooring bits, wrought iron spikes, bolts, etc.
- 1897, anonymous author, The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies[2], U.S. Government Printing Office, pages 981–:
- Sink a trench so the pipe of your water-works will be below ground; have the pump and the mules which work it at such a point and so defended by an epaulement or traverse, or some other defensive embankment, as to shield them.
- 2006, David P. Billington, Donald Conrad Jackson, Big Dams of the New Deal Era[3], University of Oklahoma Press, →ISBN:
- For thousands of years, societies have stored water, altered river flow, and transformed environments to increase food production or achieve other social or economic goals. The oldest known dam, a small earth embankment structure built about six thousand years ago at Jawa in present-day Jordan, was designed to capture rainfall and increase agricultural production.
Derived terms
[edit]Translations
[edit]artificial mound of earth and stone
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