Dictionaries › English

ditch

Pronunciation: /dɪt͡ʃ/

The English word “ditch” has 8 meanings listed here.

noun

  1. A trench; a long, shallow indentation, as for irrigation or drainage.
  2. A raised bank of earth and the hedgerow on top.

verb

  1. To discard or abandon; to stop associating with (someone).
  2. To deliberately crash-land an airplane on water.
  3. To deliberately not attend classes; to play hookey.
  4. To dig ditches.
  5. To dig ditches around.
  6. To throw into a ditch.

Etymology

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.

Keep exploring: in the interactive dictionary every word of a definition is a link. Open “ditch” there

More English words

About this dictionary

The English dictionary on Glottosphere has 650,529 entries with a page. Browse the English dictionary.

Definitions are from Wiktionary, extracted by Kaikki.org, and are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.