trench
pronunciation
How to pronounce trench in British English:
UK [trentʃ]
How to pronounce trench in American English:
US [trentʃ]
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- Noun:
- a ditch dug as a fortification having a parapet of the excavated earth
- a long steep-sided depression in the ocean floor
- any long ditch cut in the ground
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- Verb:
- impinge or infringe upon
- fortify by surrounding with trenches
- cut or carve deeply into
- set, plant, or bury in a trench
- cut a trench in, as for drainage
- dig a trench or trenches
Word Origin
- trench
- trench: [14] A trench is etymologically something ‘cut’ or ‘sliced’. The word was borrowed from Old French trenche ‘slice, cutting, ditch’, a derivative of trenchier ‘cut’ (from which English gets trenchant [14]). And this in turn went back to Latin truncāre ‘cut, mutilate’ (source of English truncate [15]), a derivative of truncus ‘tree-trunk, torso’ (source of English trunk) – the semantic link being the ‘cutting’ of branches from a tree or of limbs from a body.The sense ‘ditch’ for trench comes of course from the notion of ‘cutting’ a long narrow hole in the ground (a similar inspiration underlies cutting ‘excavation for a railway, road, etc’). Trencher ‘platter’ [14] came from the Anglo-Norman derivative trenchour, and originally denoted both a board for ‘cutting’ food up on and a ‘slice’ of bread used as a plate.=> trenchant, trencher, truncate, trunk
- trench (n.)
- late 14c., "track cut through a wood," later "long, narrow ditch" (late 15c.), from Old French trenche "a slice, cut, gash, slash; defensive ditch" (13c., Modern French tranche), from trenchier "to cut, carve, slice," possibly from Vulgar Latin *trincare, from Latin truncare "to cut or lop off" (see truncate). Trenches for military protection are first so called c. 1500. Trench warfare first attested 1918. Trench-coat first recorded 1916, a type of coat worn by British officers in the trenches during World War I.
Example
- 1. A diver explores a continental trench in silfra , iceland , in 2010 .
- 2. Researchers have discovered a potential new species of comb , or ctenophore , jellyfish near the ryukyu trench near japan .
- 3. A can of nescafe from a german trench .
- 4. The hostility between washington and beijing has escalated into something resembling trench warfare .
- 5. On land , meanwhile , the horrors of trench warfare were making the same point .