the.com/levee
a wall built to argue with a river that always gets the last word
means An embankment built along a river to keep it from flooding the land beside it; also, in older usage, a formal reception held by a sovereign or person of high rank.
from From French levée, meaning 'a raising,' the feminine past participle of lever, 'to raise' — itself from Latin levare, 'to lift,' a relative of levis, 'light' (as in not heavy). The riverbank sense came into English through French settlers in the lower Mississippi, where a levee was earth 'raised up' against the water. The same word also gave us the royal levee: originally the French king's lever, the ceremonial 'rising' from bed at which courtiers attended, where being raised from sleep became an occasion for being raised in favor.
- royal origin
- named for the king's morning reception ritual
- false safety
- raising one floods the neighbors downstream worse
- hidden length
- Mississippi system runs over 3,500 miles
- levee effect
- protection lures more building into danger zones
- sand boils
- water bubbling up behind signals imminent failure
mississippi river levee system — 2,300 miles of embankments protecting louisiana and mississippi from flooding since 1717
sacramento river levees — 1,100 miles of levees in california's central valley protecting agricultural land and communities