embank

American  

[em-bangk] / ɛmˈbæŋk /

verb (used with object)

1. to enclose or protect with an embankment.

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embank British  

/ ɪmˈbæŋk /

verb

1. (tr) to protect, enclose, or confine (a waterway, road, etc) with an embankment

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Other Word Forms

• unembanked adjective

Etymology

Origin of embank

First recorded in 1640–50; em- ¹ + bank ¹

Example Sentences

Exhausted, he still made light of his achievement––climbing through day and night to arrive before the snow should embank around him.

From The Eye of Dread by Erskine, Payne

If you were to embank Lincolnshire more stoutly against the sea? or strip the peat of Solway, or plant Plinlimmon moors with larch—then, in due season, some amateur reaping and threshing?

From The Crown of Wild Olive also Munera Pulveris; Pre-Raphaelitism; Aratra Pentelici; The Ethics of the Dust; Fiction, Fair and Foul; The Elements of Drawing by Ruskin, John

"Is he empowered to pull down churches that he may use the stones to embank his drains?"

From The MS. in a Red Box by Hamilton, John Arthur

It seemed so very odd that anybody should embank a roadway.

From She by Haggard, Henry Rider

If you were to embank Lincolnshire now,—more stoutly against the sea? or strip the peat of Solway, or plant Plinlimmon moors with larch—then, in due hour of year, some amateur reaping and threshing?

From Unto This Last and Other Essays on Political Economy by Ruskin, John