the.com/dike
A wall built by people who looked at the sea and said no.
means A long embankment or wall built to hold back water and keep low-lying land from flooding — though the word also names a ditch, and in geology a sheet of rock that cuts across other layers.
from From Old English 'dīc,' meaning a ditch or trench — the very same root that gives us 'ditch.' Here lies the lovely contradiction: when you dig a ditch, you pile the earth alongside, so one word came to mean both the hollow you dig and the bank you raise. It's a cousin of Dutch 'dijk' and German 'Teich' (pond), all springing from a Germanic root tied to digging. The Dutch, masters of holding back the sea, lent the watery sense extra weight.
- netherlands
- A third of the country sits below sea level
- geology meaning
- Also magma that froze in a rock crack
- little boy myth
- Finger-plugging tale was invented by an American author
- failure mode
- One small leak can drown a region
- ancient roots
- Romans built sea defenses two thousand years ago
afsluitdijk — 32 km dike completed 1932 in netherlands, separates zuiderzee from north sea
delta works — system of dikes in southwestern netherlands protecting 9 million people from north sea
banqiao dam — dike that failed in 1975 in henan, china, killing estimated 171,000 people