moat
19
5.8
- noun
- /moʊt/
:
foso
- To enter the castle, visitors must cross a drawbridge over the ancient moat that encircles it.
- fill the moat
- surrounded by a moat
- moat of water
It has a private Moat that no one can access.
- It has a private Moat that no one can access.
- And so to create a living wall, a living Moat around your castle was a big deal in Europe.
Examples
-
The castle is guarded and there is a moat and everything!
-
Tiny hermit crabs scuttled in a moat we had dug and lined with rocks and shells.
Fiction book (1994) -
This fish can live in our moat.
-
"The water in the moat has been standing for quite a while, so it's fairly warm.
Fiction book (1993) -
We have to cross three stone walls and a moat.
-
There was no water in the moat; there seemed to be no purpose in having dug it.
Fiction book (1992) -
One compound was surrounded by a moat, another by trees.
Academic text (2011) -
Between the fifteen-foot wall and the boulevard was a centuries-old moat that still contained water.
Fiction book (1999) -
As evidence, he notes that the villagers built their defensive moat within inches of the ditches of the old enclosure.
Academic text (2006) -
Noen U-Loke is a 30-acre mound ringed with five moats jutting 600 feet into the rice fields.
Academic text (2006)
Synonyms
173
1.0
A long, narrow trench in the ground that carries water
44
3.8
A long narrow ditch in the ground used for drainage or protection
1
9.9
A ditch dug around a building and often filled with water to stop attackers
Idioms
2
7.4
To dig a deep, wide ditch around a building and fill it with water to protect it
How Big
Surface Forms
Etymology
Moat comes from an old French word mote or motte meaning 'mound' or 'clod'. Because castles often stood on a mound with a ditch around them, the name came to mean the water-filled ditch that defends a castle.