Dyke

Quick meaning: Dyke is a noun meaning An earthwork raised to prevent inundation of low land by the sea or flooding rivers.

Meaning

An earthwork raised to prevent inundation of low land by the sea or flooding rivers.

More Meanings

1. (now chiefly Scotland) A low embankment or stone wall serving as an enclosure and boundary marker.
2. A raised causeway.
3. (dialect) Any navigable watercourse.
4. (dialect) Any watercourse.
5. (dialect) Any small body of water.
6. (geology) A body of rock (usually igneous) originally filling a fissure but now often rising above the older stratum as it is eroded away.
7. (historical) A long, narrow hollow dug from the ground to conduct water.

Example Sentences

The king of Texcuco advised the building of a great dike, so thick and strong as to keep out the water.

In Cubbaroo's dim distant past They built a double dyke. Back to back in the yard it stood An architectural dream in wood.

Serious as was the flood damage in England, the bursting of some of the dykes on the coast of Holland resulted in an even more widespread and devastating inundation.

Their exact relationship to the host-rock is obscure but from their texture and observed metamorphic relationship they are thought to be intrusive dykes rather than intercalations of more basic lava.

Word Forms

• dykes
• dyking
• dyked

Synonyms for dyke

Depending on context, synonyms include ditch, trench, fosse, puddle, pond, pool.

Related Words

Related dictionary entries include dike, levee, dam, butch, barrage, breakwater.

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