The trenchant truth is that the most last-ditch peace efforts are ending up in more mass graves … \»
Leo Tolstoy
The war trenches are basically designed to drain away…The trenchant truth is that the most last-ditch peace efforts are ending up in more mass graves … \»
Leo Tolstoy
The war trenches are basically designed to drain away the human blood from the battle fields … \»
Winston Churchill
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Word of the Day November 5
trenchantTREN-chunt
adjective 1 : keen, sharp
2 : vigorously effective and articulate; also : caustic
3 a : sharply perceptive : penetrating
b : clear-cut, distinct
The daily news satire show not only offers a healthy dose of laughs but also trenchant commentary on the current events of the day. \»Nowhere was hayseed dialect better used to deliver trenchant truths than in \’The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.\’ Through the voice of an uneducated river-town boy, Mark Twain skewered pretense, pride, and the shameful inhumanity of slavery and racism.\» — John Yemma, Christian Science Monitor, October 5, 2014
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The word trenchant comes from the Anglo-French verb trencher, meaning \»to cut,\» and may ultimately derive from the Vulgar Latin trinicare, meaning \»to cut in three.\» Hence, a trenchant sword is one with a keen edge; a trenchant remark is one that cuts deep; and a trenchant observation is one that cuts to the heart of the matter. Relatives of trenchant in English include the noun trench (\»a long ditch cut into the ground\») and the verb retrench (\»to cut down or pare away\» or \»to cut down expenses\»).
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last-ditch effort
A desperate final attempt,
as in:
We\’re making a last-ditch effort to finish on time.
This expression alludes to the military sense of last ditch, “the last line of defense.” Its figurative use dates from the early 1800s.
The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary
Copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Cite This Source
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http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/190527/difference-between-ditch-trench-and-gutter
Difference between “ditch”, “trench” and “gutter”
I have been trying to understand the difference between the three, is this a usage difference between American English and British English? What is the difference?
meaning differences nouns american-english british-english
Ditches are normally for water drainage (alongside roads, between fields, etc.). Trenches can be dug for any purpose (to plant deeper-rooted crops, protect soldiers from bombs, etc.). Gutters are also invariably for drainage, but they\’re always shallow — maybe just a \»dent\» in the middle of a road, or just the slightly lower edge of the road nearest the kerb. You also get gutters directing rainwater around roofs of buildings into downpipes. This is all General Reference available from dictionaries.
Based on what Wikipedia and LDOCE suggest, the difference isn\’t between the American and British English (apart from the little bit of background on ditch). It\’s just the subtle difference in the type of hole that\’s dug/built.
Ditch and trench are much closer in the meaning, while gutter is slightly different.
A street gutter is a depression running parallel to a road designed to collect rainwater flowing along the street and divert it into a storm drain. A gutter alleviates water buildup on a street, allowing pedestrians to pass without walking through puddles and reducing the risk of hydroplaning by road vehicles.
Needless to point out that the rain gutter is an open pipe at the edge of a roof of a building that\’s used to collect and carry away the rainwater.
A ditch is usually defined as a small to moderate depression created to channel water.
In Anglo-Saxon, the word dпc already existed and was pronounced \»deek\» in northern England and \»deetch\» in the south. The origins of the word lie in digging a trench and forming the upcast soil into a bank alongside it. This practice has meant that the name dпc was given to either the excavation or the bank, and evolved to both the words \»dike\»/\»dyke\» and \»ditch\». Thus Offa\’s Dyke is a combined structure and Car Dyke is a trench, though it once had raised banks as well. In the midlands and north of England, and in the United States, a dike is what a ditch is in the south, a property boundary marker or small drainage channel. Where it carries a stream, it may be called a running dike as in Rippingale Running Dike, which leads water from the catchwater drain, Car Dyke, to the South Forty Foot Drain in Lincolnshire (TF1427). The Weir Dike is a soak dike in Bourne North Fen, near Twenty and alongside the River Glen.
A trench is a type of excavation or depression in the ground that is generally deeper than it is wide (as opposed to a wider gully or ditch), and narrow compared to its length (as opposed to a simple hole).
So, as it\’s comprehensible, a ditch is usually deeper and wider than a gutter, whereas a trench would be usually used in civil or army terms, in addition to the geological meaning that it has.
