batardeau

English

Etymology

From French batardeau.

Noun

batardeau (plural batardeaus)

1. A cofferdam.
   • 1833, The United Service Journal and Naval and Military Magazine:

     An experiment was tried during the day upon the dykes of the citadel, which, as before stated, are fed by means of a sluice opposite the Scheldt, and separated from those of the city by a batardeau.

2. (military) A wall built across the ditch of a fortification, with a sluice gate to regulate the height of water in the ditch on both sides of the wall.

Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.
(See the entry for “batardeau”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.)

French

Pronunciation

• Audio:

  (file)

Noun

batardeau m (plural batardeaux)

1. batardeau

Further reading

• “batardeau”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.