debouch
Appearance
See also: debouche
English
[edit]Etymology
[edit]From French déboucher (de + bouche (“mouth”)), modelled on Italian sboccare.
Pronunciation
[edit]Noun
[edit]debouch (plural debouches)
- (geography) A narrow outlet from which a body of water pours.
- 1888 May 26, Phillip Carroll, “Sulphur Mines in Sicily”, in Scientific American Supplement[1], number 647:
- In level portions of the country vertical shafts are preferred, but where the mine is situated upon a hill a debouch may often be found below the sulphur seam, ...
- (military) A fortress at the end of a defile.
- 1887, George B. McClellan, McClellan's Own Story:
- To prevent another demonstration of this character, and to insure a debouch on the south bank of the James, it became necessary to occupy Coggin's Point, which was done on the 3d, and the enemy driven back towards Petersburg.
Verb
[edit]debouch (third-person singular simple present debouches, present participle debouching, simple past and past participle debouched)
- (intransitive) To pour forth from a narrow opening; to emerge from a narrow place like a defile into open country or a wider space.
- 1985, Anthony Burgess, Kingdom of the Wicked:
- The pretty pimpled young man, no longer a boy, came down from the imperial box in his purple to the performers’ well which debouched into the arena.
- 1993, Will Self, My Idea of Fun:
- Ungrateful brats debouch from their cheap holiday in someone else’s misery and their tired parents try desperately to summon up joy out of indifference.
- 1997, Thomas Pynchon, Mason & Dixon:
- The water rushes away in uncommonly long waterfalls, downward for hours, unbrak’d, till at last debouching into an interior Lake of great size.