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A place dug; a pit; a ditch; a den; a cave. Which to that shady delve him brought at last The very tigers from their delves Look out. Moore.

A work constructed beyond the main ditch of a fortress, and in front of the curtain between two bastions, intended to defend the curtain; a ravelin. See Ravelin.

To ditch. [Obs.]

To become vapid, flat, or spiritless, as liquor. To die in the last ditch, to fight till death; to die rather than surrender. "There is one certain way," replied the Prince [William of Orange] " by which I can be sure never to see my country's ruin, -- I will die in the last ditch." Hume (Hist. of Eng. ). -- To die out…

To hollow out, as a well; to form, as a ditch, by removing earth; to excavate; as, to dig a ditch or a well.

A ditch; a channel for water made by digging. Little channels or dikes cut to every bed. Ray.

A ditcher. Piers Plowman.

Causing, or tending to cause, giddiness or vertigo. To climb from the brink of Fleet Ditch by a dizzy ladder. Macaulay.

wet thoroughly; to soak; to saturate with water or other liquid; to immerse. Now dam the ditches and the floods restrain; Their moisture has already drenched the plain. Dryden.

rth, in the form of a single parapet or of a small rampart. It is sometimes raised in the ditch and sometimes beyond it. Wilhelm.

A furious attack made by troops on a fortified place, in which ladders are used to pass a ditch or mount a rampart. Sin enters, not by escalade, but by cunning or treachery. Buckminster.

The side of the ditch next the parapet; -- same as scarp, and opposed to counterscarp.

sticks, twigs, or small branches of trees, used for fuel, for raising batteries, filling ditches, or other purposes in fortification; a fascine. Shak.

drical bundle of small sticks of wood, bound together, used in raising batteries, filling ditches, strengthening ramparts, and making parapets; also in revetments for river banks, and in mats for dams, jetties, etc.

ified place; usually, a small fortified place, occupied only by troops, surrounded with a ditch, rampart, and parapet, or with palisades, stockades, or other means of defense; a fortification. Detached works, depending solely on their own strength, belong to the class of works termed forts. Farrow.

To strengthen and secure by forts or batteries, or by surrounding with a wall or ditch or other military works; to render defensible against an attack by hostile forces.

A ditch or moat.

ructed by the Romans in England and other parts of Europe; -- so called from the fosse or ditch on each side for keeping it dry.

x, pitch, and glue, used in various ways, as for igniting buildings or works, or to light ditches and ramparts. Farrow.

The scarp of a ditch or moat. "To clean the graffages." Miss Mitford.