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

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Etymology

Origin of embank

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

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Example Sentences

See Examples For:

embank

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 Payne Erskine

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

From She by Henry Rider Haggard

They excavated a space, to the depth of three or four feet, and used the earth they threw out to embank the walls raised upon the edge of the excavation.

From The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 08, No. 49, November, 1861 by Various

Sir,—What are the authorities about that they do not at once embank the river on both sides up to Richmond, and span it with five bridges between this and Gravesend?

From Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 93, October 29, 1887 by Various

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 John Ruskin

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