ditch
/dɪt͡ʃ/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: 3.90 in modern English
11
Scrabble Score
5
Letters
1
Syllables
5
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
A trench; a long, shallow indentation, as for irrigation or drainage.
verb
To deliberately not attend classes; to play hookey.
Example Sentences
- "Digging ditches has long been considered one of the most demanding forms of manual labor."
- "The truck careered off the road into a ditch."
- "Ditches continued to be employed as the sole defensive measure at many sites even after wall building began to emerge. For example, an immense ditch varying between 15 and 20 meters in width and marked by depths of 2.5 to 3.8 meters has recently been discovered in Hubei near Sui-chou."
- "You flung a ditch on my vision Of beauty, love and truth. O stony grey soil of Monaghan You burgled my bank of youth!"
- "The original ditches were created by digging trenches, as boundaries and/or irrigation. But to the English, the ditch is the trench. Whereas in Ireland, the ditch is the raised bank of earth and the hedgerow on top. (As for the trench, where I come from that’s a sheugh)."
- "Once the sun came out we ditched our rain-gear and started a campfire."
Etymology
Etymology tree Proto-Germanic *dīkaz Proto-West Germanic *dīk Old English dīċ Middle English dich English ditch From Middle English dich, from Old English dīċ (“trench, moat”) from Proto-Germanic *dīkaz (compare Swedish dike, Icelandic díki, West Frisian dyk (“dam”), Dutch dijk (“dam”), German Teich (“pond”)), from Proto-Indo-European *dʰeygʷ- (“to stick, set up”) (compare Latin fīgō (“to affix, fasten”), Lithuanian diegti (“to prick; plant”), dýgsti (“to geminate, grow”)). Doublet of dike.