Liberal Dictionary English Dictionary
noun
- an embankment for controlling or holding back the waters of the sea or a river: They built a temporary dike of sandbags to keep the river from flooding the town.
- a ditch.
- a bank of earth formed of material being excavated.
- a causeway.
- British Dialect. a low wall or fence, especially of earth or stone, for dividing or enclosing land.
- an obstacle; barrier.
- Geology.
- a long, narrow, cross-cutting mass of igneous rock intruded into a fissure in older rock.
- a similar mass of rock composed of other kinds of material, as sandstone.
- Australian Slang. a urinal.
verb (used with object), diked, dik·ing.
- to furnish or drain with a dike.
- to enclose, restrain, or protect by a dike: to dike a tract of land.
noun, verb
- a variant spelling of dyke 1
Old English dic “trench, ditch; an earthwork with a trench; moat,” from Proto-Germanic *dik- (cf. Old Norse diki “ditch, fishpond,” Old Frisian dik “mound, dam,” Middle Dutch dijc “mound, dam, pool,” Dutch dijk “dam,” German Deich “embankment”), from PIE root *dheigw- “to pierce, fasten” (cf. Sanskrit dehi- “wall,” Old Persian dida “wall, stronghold, fortress,” Persian diz).
At first “an excavation,” later (late 15c.) applied to the resulting earth mound; a sense development paralleled by cognate forms in many other languages. This is the northern variant of the word that in the south of England yielded ditch (n.).
- A body of igneous rock that cuts across the structure of adjoining rock, usually as a result of the intrusion of magma. Dikes are often of a different composition from the rock they cut across. They are usually on the order of centimeters to meters across and up to tens of kilometers long. See illustration at batholith.
- An embankment of earth and rock built to prevent floods or to hold irrigation water in for agricultural purposes.