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Dike   Listen
noun
Dike  n.  
1.
A ditch; a channel for water made by digging. "Little channels or dikes cut to every bed."
2.
An embankment to prevent inundations; a levee. "Dikes that the hands of the farmers had raised... Shut out the turbulent tides."
3.
A wall of turf or stone. (Scot.)
4.
(Geol.) A wall-like mass of mineral matter, usually an intrusion of igneous rocks, filling up rents or fissures in the original strata.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Dike" Quotes from Famous Books



... 221.).—On the 14th May, 1491 (6 Henry VII.), one Master William Burton, the schoolmaster of St. Leonard's Hospital, in the city of York, was accused before the magistrates of having said that "King Richard was an hypocrite, a crocheback, and buried in a dike like a dog." This circumstance is recorded in a contemporary document of unquestionable authenticity (vide extracts from York Records in the Fifteenth Century, p. 220.); and must remove all doubt as to the fact of Richard's bodily deformity. The conjecture of Dr. Wallis, quoted by G. F. G., ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 77, April 19, 1851 • Various

... Bridge, which crosses the river just at its bend, and whose massive pointed arches took the place, when they were first built, of a ferry by which the city was entered at the "Ship Gate," whence now you look over "the Cop" or high bank on the right side of the stream, and view, as from a dike in Holland, the reclaimed land stretching eight miles beyond Chester, though the resemblance ceases at Saltney, where behind the iron-works tower the Welsh hills—Moel-Famman conspicuous above the rest—that bound ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various

... Climbing over the dike which enclosed the main deposit, we descended to the cistern, filled our cups, and swallowed the contents without taking a breath. When we dipped up a second, Tom Clary looked into the depths of his cup with ...
— Captured by the Navajos • Charles A. Curtis

... down to the pond, and dived right into the water with her. And there they all turned into men and women. The mother remained for some time on the dike, wailed a ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston

... was right, and men, big and powerful as they were, became physically worn out. . . . Finally came the Iron Age, in which enfeebled mankind had to toil for bread with their hands, and, bent on gain, did their best to overreach each other. Dike, or Astraea, the goddess of justice and good faith, modesty and truth, turned her back on such scenes, and retired to Olympus, while Zeus determined to destroy the human race by a great flood. The whole of Greece lay under water, and none but Deucalion and his ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly

... himself a god." These divinely-appointed rulers were regarded as the ministers of God, the visible representatives of the unseen Power which really governs all. The divine government must also have its invisible agents—its Nemesis, and Themis, and Dike, the ministers of law, of justice, and of retribution; and its Jupiter, and Juno, and Neptune, and Pluto, ruling, with delegated powers, in the heavens, the air, the sea, and the nethermost regions. So that, ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker

... Severus succeeded to the empire and reigned seventeen winters. He begirt Britain with a dike from sea to sea. ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall

... myself: 'As long as I get twenty crowns out of them, I'll sell them the value of it.' But then I had other things in my heart, which I'll tell you about now. I came across one of your cavalrymen smoking his pipe near my dike, just behind my barn. I went and took my scythe off the hook, and I came back with short steps from behind, while he lay there without hearing anything. And I cut off his head with one stroke, like a feather, while he only said 'Oof!' You have only to look at the bottom of the pond; ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893

... in making haste slowly. But he had to move. The crisis of the situation was upon us, the dike was already leaking and measures were demanded which would stop the leak before it became a flood. In the exigency there was no time for the Food Administrator to devise and carefully test plans suggested ...
— Herbert Hoover - The Man and His Work • Vernon Kellogg

... eh?" answered the old soldier. "You shall give me satisfaction to-morrow morning. If you had made war in the Valteline, you would not talk like that; and if you had seen his Eminence marching upon the dike at Rochelle, with the old Marquis de Spinola, while volleys of cannonshot were sent after him, you would have nothing to ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny

... record in favour of 'an origin of justice connected with the ordinances of law.'[12] That 'justum is a form of jussum, that which has been ordered:' that '[Greek: dikaion] comes directly from [Greek: dike], a suit of law:' that 'recht, from which came right and righteous, is synonymous with law,' is obvious enough; and it may not be out of place to add that in French the word droit has, with almost savage irony, been selected as the ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton

... if he had had his own way he would not have rested until his enemy had suffered the full penalty of the law. But John Garvestad, suspecting what was in the young man's mind, suddenly divested himself of his pride, and cringing dike a whipped dog, came and asked Erik's pardon, entreating him not ...
— Boyhood in Norway • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen

... Here Italy ends;—when, from the top of Monte Croce, beyond the vast plain swarming with German regiments, I first beheld the towers of Verona, and stretching out my arms, as though fearful of their vanishing, cried out to them, Wait!—when, from the dike of Fusina, I saw Venice, far-off, azure, fantastic, and cried with wet eyes, Heavenly!—when Rome, surrounded by the smoke of our batteries, first burst upon me from the height of Monterondo, and I shouted, She is ours!—always, ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Italian • Various

... were in your place I would absolutely dispute the fact of junction (or articulation as he oddly calls it) on such evidence. I go farther than you; I do not believe in the world there is or has been a junction between a dike and stream of lava of exact shape of either ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin

... on the sunny dike, Where the white pond-lilies teeter, And I went to fishing like quaint old Ike, And she ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various

... America is, I believe, increasing. I cannot prove this, and I state it only as an impression. The Exclusion Law at its best is a leaky dike, and the tide washing up against it leaps through and sometimes overflows. How this comes to pass I have not space to tell, but while I do not believe that all men have their price, I suspect that some Custom House officials have not always been ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 52, No. 2, June, 1898 • Various

... the hoof-marks, by studying the conformation of the cliff before him, and by glancing back now and again at Pogosa, contrived to find the way. Slowly and for several hours they climbed this vast dike. It was nearly eleven thousand feet above the sea here, and Kelley himself breathed with effort ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland

... had fairly passed up the avenue, or rather the lane, lying between a hedge of hawthorn on one side and the rough stone dike which marked the bounds of the nearest neighbour on the other, and entered at the gate which opened on the lawn, it was not the dull grey house which one noticed first, but ...
— Allison Bain - By a Way she knew not • Margaret Murray Robertson

... a magnificent site, which, towering above the valley, is surrounded on all sides by grim hill-slopes, while in the distance is the sea, along the edge of which extends the city of Dieppe, like a majestic dike. A mimic battle took place in the presence of Madame and her daughter, on the ground where Henry IV. had delivered the famous battle of September 21, 1589. Numerous strokes on the flags of different colors indicated the lines of the Bearnais, and circumscribed the enceinte ...
— The Duchess of Berry and the Court of Charles X • Imbert De Saint-Amand

... stranded grampus now than a fox-hunter. In course I brought down a pair of kickseys and pipe-cases, intending to have a round with the old muggers, but the snow put a stop to all that. I heard, however, that both the Telscombe Tye and the Devil's Dike dogs had been running their half-crown rounds after hares, some of which ended in "captures," others in "escapes," as the newspapers terms them. I dined at the Albion on Christmas Day, and most misfortunately, ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees

... the damage is already estimated at 60,000 livres.—It makes little difference whether the proprietor has been benevolent, like M. de Talaru,[1203] who had supported the poor on his estate at Issy the preceding winter. The peasants destroy the dike which conducts water to his communal mill; condemned by the parliament to restore it, they declare that not only will they not obey. Should M. de Talaru try to rebuild it they will return with three hundred armed men, and tear it ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... supply is drawn from the bottom of the tank. The value of most small fishes for the purpose of destroying mosquito larvae was well indicated by an experience described to us by Mr. C. H. Russell, of Bridgeport, Conn. In this case a very high tide broke away a dike and flooded the salt meadows of Stratford, a small town a few miles from Bridgeport. The receding tide left two small lakes, nearly side by side and of the same size. In one lake the tide left a dozen or more small fishes, while the other was fishless. ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume V (of VI) • Various

... hundred and fifty acres in extent, generally regarded as useless, in consequence of its being submerged every spring by the freshets in the river. Colonel Colt bought this meadow for a nominal sum, and, to the astonishment of the good people of Hartford, proceeded to surround it with a strong dike, or embankment. This embankment was two miles in length, one hundred and fifty feet wide at the base, from thirty to sixty feet wide at the top, and from ten to twenty-five feet high. Its strength was further increased by planting willows along the sides; ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.

... the great arch-enemy of human liberty, and sent special envoys to assist at the ceremony. These haughty American sovereigns were not permitted, however, to enter the sacred presence of the Czar attired in their regal robes—the dress of American gentlemen; but were required to dike out like English flunkeys at a fancy feed. "Evening coat with plain metal buttons, white vest, knee-breeches, black silk stockings, no ornaments"—such was the ukase issued to the envoys of Uncle ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... floods covered the face of the country almost to the Parsonage door. "I hope," wrote the Rector to John on June 6th, "I may be able to serve both my cures this summer, or if not, die pleasantly in my last dike." On June 21st he could "make shift to get from Wroote to Epworth by boat." Five days later he was twisted with rheumatism as a result of his Sunday journey to Epworth and back, "being lamed with having my breeches too full ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... nick dike flake fleck flick cake sock deck meek flock pack yoke slick shock poke track hack dock snake neck stuck clack sleek strike crack freak pluck truck stroke brake drake shake black struck sneak spoke tweak ...
— The Beacon Second Reader • James H. Fassett

... the causeway they came upon the fort of Xoloc. Here a massive stone wall, twelve feet high, crossed the dike, and stretched out on to the lake on either side. Towers were erected at its angles and, properly defended, it could have resisted the attack of ...
— By Right of Conquest - Or, With Cortez in Mexico • G. A. Henty

... drop into the foul gulf of vice. With the blind egotism of selfishness, they wish merely to gratify their present inclinations, ignoring the consequences. They are like children who think it would be sport to see a little cataract falling over a Holland dike. Therefore, when the tide is in they open a small channel, but are soon aghast to find that the deep sea is ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe

... dotted with houses and barns. Between this and the shore there extended a continuous tract of low land, which had evidently once been a salt-water marsh, for along the water's edge the coarse grass grew luxuriantly; but a little distance back there was a dike, about six or eight feet high, which ran from the island to the shore, and evidently protected the intervening level from the sea. The island itself thus served as a dike, and the artificial works that had been made ran where the sea ...
— The Lily and the Cross - A Tale of Acadia • James De Mille

... time that those interested in the dream looked in vain for its name on the maps. Until now we have spoken only of the spontaneous manifestations of the future. It would seem as though coming events, gathered in front of our lives, bear with crushing weight upon the uncertain and deceptive dike of the present, which is no longer able to contain them. They ooze through, they seek a crevice by which to reach us. But, side by side with these passive, independent and intractable premonitions, which are but so many vagrant and furtive emanations of ...
— The Unknown Guest • Maurice Maeterlinck

... speck which came nearer and nearer until he paused to watch it, standing upon a little incline and looking steadily along the rude cart track. The speck grew in size. A person on horseback,—a woman! Soon she swung her horse around as though she recognised him, jumped a little dike to reach him the quicker and reined up her horse by his side, holding one hand down to him. "Mr. Tallente!" she exclaimed. "How wonderful!" He held her hand, looking steadfastly, almost eagerly, up into her flushed face. Her eyes were filled with pleasure. His errand, ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... crystalline acid dike rocks which often accompany a large igneous intrusion and which have obviously crystallized somewhat later than the main igneous mass. They may constitute either sharply delimited dikes or more irregular ...
— The Economic Aspect of Geology • C. K. Leith

... 37th Virginia. He deployed his men under cover, but now they were out in a great and ragged field, all up and down, with boggy hollows, scarred too by rail fences and blurred by low-growing briar patches. Diagonally across it, many yards away, ran one of the stone fences of the region, a long dike of loosely piled and rounded rock. Beyond it the ground kept the same nature, but gradually lifted to a fringe of tall trees. Emerging from this wood came now a Federal line of battle. It came with pomp and circumstance. The sun shone on a thousand bayonets; bright colours tossed ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston

... had been found good enough as a pathway for kings, and saints and pilgrims should be good enough for lovers of old-time methods. The dike yonder was built for those who believe in the devil of haste, and for those who also ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various

... Friend Geddes's grounds, there is a willow walk by the very verge of the stream, so sad, so solemn, and so silent, that it must have commanded your admiration. The brook, restrained at the ultimate boundary of the grounds by a natural dam-dike or ledge of rocks, seemed, even in its present swollen state, scarcely to glide along: and the pale willow-trees, dropping their long branches into the stream, gathered around them little coronals of the foam that floated down from the more rapid stream above. The high rock, ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott

... away. Then an army from all parts of England was gathered very nigh; (78) and they came to Gloucester: whence they sallied not far out against the Welsh, and there lay some time. And Earl Harold caused the dike to be dug about the town the while. Meantime men began to speak of peace; and Earl Harold and those who were with him came to Bilsley, where amity and friendship were established between them. The sentence ...
— The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle • Unknown

... four months' siege of 1574. But from the parched lips of William, tossing on his bed of fever at Rotterdam, had issued the command: "Break down the dikes: give Holland back to ocean:" and the people had replied: "Better a drowned land than a lost land." They began to demolish dike after dike of the strong lines, ranged one within another for fifteen miles to their city of the interior. It was an enormous task; the garrison was starving; and the besiegers laughed in scorn at the slow progress of the puny insects who sought ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden

... shunned by the foraging gulls. Near about sunset the crane will journey homeward above them; Round them, under the moon, all the calm night long, Winnowing soft gray wings of marsh-owls wander and wander, Now to the broad, lit marsh, now to the dusk of the dike. Soon, thro' their dew-wet frames, in the live keen freshness of morning, Out of the teeth of the dawn ...
— In Divers Tones • Charles G. D. Roberts

... interspace[obs3]; separation &c. 44; break, gap, opening; hole &c. 260; chasm, hiatus, caesura; interruption, interregnum; interstice, lacuna, cleft, mesh, crevice, chink, rime, creek, cranny, crack, chap, slit, fissure, scissure[obs3], rift, flaw, breach, rent, gash, cut, leak, dike, ha-ha. gorge, defile, ravine, canon, crevasse, abyss, abysm; gulf; inlet, frith[obs3], strait, gully; pass; furrow &c. 259; abra[obs3]; barranca[obs3], barranco[obs3]; clove [U.S.], gulch [U.S.], notch [U.S.]; yawning gulf; hiatus maxime[Lat], hiatus valde deflendus[Lat]; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... of a child finding a little leak in the dike that shuts off the sea from Holland, and stopping it with his hand till help could come, staying there all the night, holding back the floods with his little hand. It was but a tiny, trickling stream that he held back; yet if he had not done it, it would soon have ...
— Making the Most of Life • J. R. Miller

... 53, 54. If a man has neglected to strengthen his dike and has not kept his dike strong, and a breach has broken out in his dike, and the waters have flooded the meadow, the man in whose dike the breach has broken out shall restore the corn he has caused to be lost. [54]. If he be not able to restore the corn, he and ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Contracts and Letters • C. H. W. Johns

... was that first, redoubtable moment of inundation, when the stream rises to the level of the levee and when the water begins to filter through the fissures of dike. A second more and the barricade would have ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... cast up: they caulle it the Wynde Mille Hille, but I thinke the dungeon of sum olde castelle was there. By olde Torkesey standith southely the ruines of Fosse Nunnery, hard by the stone-bridge over Fosse Dik; and there Fosse Dike hath his entering ynto Trente. There be 2 smaul paroche chirches in new Torkesey and the Priory of S. Leonard standith on theste [the East] side of it. The ripe [bank] that Torkesey standith on is sumwhat higher ground than is by the west ...
— The Baron's Yule Feast: A Christmas Rhyme • Thomas Cooper

... anniversary of the day upon which Balboa took possession of the Pacific Ocean) the Gamboa dike, marking the division between the canal waters of the Atlantic and the Pacific, is blown open when President Wilson presses an electric button at the White House. This year a mud scow passes through the canal from ...
— Gold Seekers of '49 • Edwin L. Sabin

... property by eleven o'clock of the morning. He looked about reflectively. The rough board cabin and the rougher shaft-house were scarcely worth knocking down for lumber. There, on the big, barren dike, were several tunnels and prospects, in addition to the shaft, all "workings" that Briggs had opened up in his labors on the ledge. They were mere yawning mockeries of mining, but at least had served a charlatan's requirements. A few ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels

... enfolded! A jolt!—and for the last time you return to consciousness. By now the sun is high in the heavens, and you hear a voice cry "gently, gently!" as a farm waggon issues from a by-road. Below, enclosed within an ample dike, stretches a sheet of water which glistens like copper in the sunlight. Beyond, on the side of a slope, lie some scattered peasants' huts, a manor house, and, flanking the latter, a village church with its cross flashing like a star. There also comes wafted to your ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol

... cracks in rocks filled by materials poured into them at some period of eruption when the melted masses within the earth were thrown out and flowed like water into any inequality or depression of the surface around. The walls that inclose such a dike are often found to be completely altered by contact with its burning contents, and to have assumed a character quite different from the rocks of which they make a part; while the mass itself which fills the fissure shows by the character of its crystallization that it has cooled ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various

... learned at length that here was all that remained of the old Genesee Canal. Thirty years ago, this moat had brimmed with water, and barges had plied their sleepy traffic between Dansville and Rochester. But the old order had changed, and a day had come when the dike had been cut through, the lazy water let out into the surrounding flats, and the old waterway left to the willows and the wild-flowers, the mink and the musk-rat. Only thirty years ago—yet to-day Nature has so completely taken it all back to herself that ...
— October Vagabonds • Richard Le Gallienne

... time, but he does not know it from a potato. When he came in that dreadful night to supper, he handed the watch to me and told me to take good care of it until he asked for it again. Just as he opened his lips to say more, Broom Klatterboost came flying in with word that the dike was in danger. Ah! The waters were terrible that Pinxter-week! My man, alack, caught up his tools and ran out. That was the last I ever saw of him in his right mind. He was brought in again by midnight, nearly dead, with his poor head all bruised and cut. The fever passed off in time, but ...
— Hans Brinker - or The Silver Skates • Mary Mapes Dodge

... pieces of gold, but that the money arrived only as his corpse was being lowered into the tomb! As the poet's daughter indignantly refused to accept this tardy atonement, another relative took the money and built the dike which Firdusi ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber

... "Us 'ud dike out in spick an' span clean clothes come Sund'ys. Ever'body wore homespun clo'es den. De mistis an' de res' o' de ladies in de Big House made mos' of 'em. De cullud wimmins wore some kin' o' dress wid white aprons an' de mens wore overalls an' homespun pants an' shirts. Course, all ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Mississippi Narratives • Works Projects Administration

... found occasionally in the other terraces. In the Catoctin Belt they appear irregularly in the granite and schist. Rare cases also occur in the rocks of the Piedmont plain. The diabase of the Newark areas is almost exclusively confined to the red sandstone, and the dike at Leesburg cutting the limestone conglomerate is almost the ...
— History and Comprehensive Description of Loudoun County, Virginia • James W. Head

... overflows For every flock, for every lamb, Nor heeds, though angry creeds oppose With Luther's dike or Calvin's dam." ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various

... the vestiges of this ancient work, which were almost obliterated by design or accident. By the indefatigable labor of the soldiers, a broad and deep channel was speedily prepared for the reception of the Euphrates. A strong dike was constructed to interrupt the ordinary current of the Nahar-Malcha: a flood of waters rushed impetuously into their new bed; and the Roman fleet, steering their triumphant course into the Tigris, derided the vain and ineffectual barriers which the Persians ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon

... renders it probable that the system will be adopted ultimately in Holland. The future of woman's suffrage is more problematical. Women already possess the right to vote in the proceedings of the dike associations if they are taxpayers or if they own property adjoining the dikes, and in June, 1908, the Lutheran Synod gave women the right to vote in ecclesiastical affairs on a (p. 528) footing with men. Since 1894 there has been a National Woman's Suffrage Society, to which was added, ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg

... cliffs. We run six miles in a little more than half an hour and emerge into a more open portion of the canyon, where high hills and ledges of rock intervene between the river and the distant walls. Just at the head of this open place the river runs across a dike; that is, a fissure in the rocks, open to depths below, was filled with eruptive matter, and this on cooling was harder than the rocks through which the crevice was made, and when these were washed away the harder volcanic matter remained as ...
— Canyons of the Colorado • J. W. Powell

... of the brain-parasite to him. Try to get him to talk to Hys about the last raid. Try to get him to hold off the attack. I'll keep the radio with me and as soon as I know anything I'll call in. This is all last resort, finger in the dike kind of stuff, but it is all we can do. Because if we do nothing, it ...
— Planet of the Damned • Harry Harrison

... Corps of the Army has contracted to close all breaks in the dike system before the next season of high water. A most thorough and elaborate survey of the whole situation has been made and embodied in a report with recommendations for future flood control, which will be presented to the Congress. ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... some time since from Mr. Riddoch, of Falkirk, a sort of iron mallet, said to have been found in the ruins of Grame's Dike; there it was reclaimed about three months since by the gentleman on whose lands it was found, a Doctor—by a very polite letter from his man of business. Having unluckily mislaid his letter, and being totally unable either ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott

... Haarlemmer Meer. Proposals for its drainage were made by one of these engineers as far back as 1663. The next enterprise in hand is the drainage of the southern lobe of the Zuyder Zee, which is stated to have an average depth of thirteen feet, and it is intended to cut it off by a dike from the northern basin and erect sufficient engines around it to pump it out in thirteen years at the rate of a foot a ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various

... than old women wrangling over the why and wherefore of a broken crock. Let the War-duke rule here, as is but meet and right. Yet if I might speak and not break the peace of the Goths, then would I say this, that it might be better for us to fall on these Romans at once before they have cast up a dike about them, as Fox telleth is their wont, and that even in an hour they ...
— The House of the Wolfings - A Tale of the House of the Wolfings and All the Kindreds of the Mark Written in Prose and in Verse • William Morris

... middle of the Cambridgeshire fens, between St. Ives, Cambridge, and Ely. In the two parishes of Utterden and Netherden there is no rise of ground which can by any stretch of complaisance be called a hill. The property is bisected by an immense straight dike, which is called the Middle Wash, and which is so sluggish, so straight, so ugly, and so deep, as to impress the mind of a stranger with the ideas of suicide. And there are straight roads and straight dikes, ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope

... DIKE (i. e. Justice), a Greek goddess, the daughter of Zeus and Themis; the guardian of justice and judgment, the foe of deceit and violence, and the accuser before Zeus ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... platforms,—splashes, sparks, coruscations, showers of soldiers. At every corner of the town-wall, every guard-house, every gateway, every sentry-box, every drawbridge, every reedy ditch, and rushy dike, soldiers, soldiers, soldiers. And the town being pretty well all wall, guard-house, gateway, sentry-box, drawbridge, reedy ditch, and rushy dike, the town was pretty ...
— Somebody's Luggage • Charles Dickens

... Agency we hired a wagon and drove to the St. Mary's Lake. With a Piegan (old Four Horns) for a guide we camped on the lower Lake, and Zulime caught two enormous pike. At Upper St. Mary's, we set our tent just below the dike. A "Chalet" on this spot now welcomes the tourist, but in those days St. Mary's was a lone, and stormful mountain water with not even a forest ranger's cabin to offer shelter. We lived in our own tent and cooked our own food—a glorious experience to me, but to Zulime ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland

... was showing the guests how safely the archers and slingers could be concealed behind the walls and battlements and discharge their missiles, and explaining the purpose of the great catapults on the outermost dike washed by the sea, the artist was listening to the ever-increasing roar of the waves which poured into the harbour from the open sea, to their loud dashing against the strong mole, to the shrill scream of the sea ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... long reach in the river soon after nine o'clock on Friday morning, and could plainly see the town of Cairo, resting upon the flat prairies in the distance. The now yellow, muddy current of the Ohio rolled along the great railroad dike, which had cost one million dollars to erect, and formed a barrier strong enough to resist the rushing waters of the freshets. Across the southern apex of this prairie city could be seen the "Father of Waters," its wide surface bounded on the west by the wilderness. A few moments more, and my ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop

... annihilate, the English leader and his small but resolute band, who, undismayed, awaited the coming storm. In the ever-memorable lines of Torres Vedras, the legions of Buonaparte met a stern and effectual dike to their torrent of headlong aggression. Upon the happy selection and able defence of those celebrated positions, were based the salvation of the Peninsula and the subsequent glorious progress of the British arms. Whilst referring to them, Mr Grattan seizes ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various

... such times when the floodgates of Heaven were open, and it naturally occurred to a man's mind how much better it would have been to have had floodgates on the earth instead, for then you would not be brought to a standstill on the dike between two ponds, with the ground so soaking wet beneath your feet that there seemed nothing for it but to stick there till you grew old, or carry your waggon away with you on ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai

... lower part of Stirlingshire, they crossed Graham's Dike;** and pursuing their course westward, left Stirling Castle far to the right. They ascended the Ochil Hills, and proceeding along the wooded heights which overhang the banks of Teith, forded that river, and entered at once into the broad valley which opened to them a distant ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter

... have to pass a night on the downs, he turned his horse's head; but the animal was obdurate, and a moment after he was lost. He said, "Great Scott! where am I? Where did this ploughed field come from? I must be near the dike." Then thinking that he recognized the headland, he rode in a different direction, but was stopped by a paling and a chalk-pit, and, riding round it, he guessed the chalk-pit must be fifty feet deep. ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore

... possibly unconscious resentment to render the situation still more difficult. The truth was, he could barely trust himself to speak lest mere words work on his guard like tiny streams that sap the strength of the dike till it breaks and looses the pent ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance

... cents charges on it by this time, but the gun alone is worth $10. Also, if you want a double- barreled shot-gun, muzzle-loader, go along the bank of the Missouri River, on the north side, about a mile below St. Charles bridge, and about twenty feet along the bank, just east of that dike that runs out into the river, and you will find in a little gully a shot-gun and a musket. Be careful. I left them both loaded with buckshot and caps on the tubes. They were laying, wrapped up in an oil-cloth, with some weeds thrown over them. Also, down on the river ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton

... across the heath there had been a wide dike recently cut, and the earth from the cutting was cast up roughly on the other side. Surely this would stop them! But no; with scarcely a pause Lizzie took the leap, stumbled among the rough clods and fell. Blantyre groaned, "Now, Auster, do your best!" He gave me a steady ...
— Black Beauty • Anna Sewell

... office, where we sat all the morning. At noon home to my poor wife and dined, and then by coach abroad to Mrs. Turner's where I have not been for many a day, and there I found her and her sister Dike very sad for the death of their brother. After a little common expression of sorrow, Mrs. Turner told me that the trouble she would put me to was, to consult about getting an achievement prepared, scutcheons were done ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys

... furnished with an axe or scythe of that stamp." The next year plans were discussed for the general improvement of the marsh, and a number of indigent Acadians were employed to assist in the construction of a "Running Dike" and aboideau. These Acadians probably lived at French Village, near the Kennebecasis, and the fact that they had some experience in dykeing marsh lands shows that they were refugees from the Expulsion of 1755. The situation of the first dyke was ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond

... its ruin. It was situated where now a piece of water, the Etang de Laval, washes the desolate shores of the Bay of Trepasses—though another version of the tale has it that it stood in the vast basin which now forms the Bay of Douarnenez. A strong dike protected it from the ocean, the sluices only admitting sufficient water for the needs of the town. Gradlon constantly bore round his neck a silver key which opened at the same time the vast sluices and the city gates. He lived in great state in a palace of marble, cedar, and gold, and his only ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence

... possessed, demanded almost more than human strength. The castle was surrounded on all sides by a moat, beyond which rose a perpendicular wall of masonry twenty feet in height. This rampart was washed on three sides by the sea, and on the other was protected by a broad deep dike and then an outer wall. From within, the rampart was guarded by eight huge towers that stood out from the castle-walls, and the four corners of the ramparts were further strengthened by four more towers with apertures ...
— The Swedish Revolution Under Gustavus Vasa • Paul Barron Watson

... of land. The popular connection between this word and hide, a skin, as in the story of the first Jutish settlement, is a fable. It is connected with an Anglo-Saxon word meaning household, which appears also in Huish, Anglo-Sax. hi-wisc. Dike, or Dyke, and Moat, also Mott, both have, or had, a double meaning. We still use dike, which belongs to dig and ditch, both of a trench and a mound, and the latter was the earlier meaning of Fr. motte, now a clod, In Anglo-French we find moat used of a mound fortress ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley

... my feats this single week, Would mak' a daft-like diary, O! I drave my cart outow'r a dike, My horses in a miry, O! I wear my stockings white an' blue, My love 's sae fierce an' fiery, O! I drill the land that I should plough, An' plough the drills entirely, O! O, love, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... secure it against any sudden surprise, he constructed the celebrated Julius Portus on the coast of Campania, near Baiae, by connecting the inland Lake Avernus, by means of a canal, with the Lake Lucrinus, and by strengthening the latter lake against the sea, by an artificial dike or dam. While he was engaged in these great works, Antony sailed to Taventum, in B.C. 37, with 300 ships. Maecenas hastened thither from Rome, and succeeded once more in concluding an amicable arrangement. ...
— A Smaller History of Rome • William Smith and Eugene Lawrence

... he, ann ze were as black, As evir the crown of your dadyes hat, Tis I wad lay thee by my backe, And awa wi' me thou sould gang. And O! quoth she, ann I were as white, As evir the snaw lay on the dike, Ild dead me braw, and lady-like, And awa with thee ...
— Book of Old Ballads • Selected by Beverly Nichols

... exceedingly fertile and agreeable. Several of these torrents are so large and deep, such as those of Santa, Baranca, and others, that without the assistance of the Indians, who break and diminish for a short time the force of the current, by means of piles and branches forming a temporary wear or dike, the Spaniards would be unable to pass. In these hazardous passages, it was necessary to get over with all possible expedition, to avoid the violence of the stream, which often rolled down very large stones. Travellers in the plain of Peru, when going ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr

... had not expected this last humiliation; but being forced to drink the cup, he drained it to the lees. He swore by Zeus Orchios, Watcher of Oaths, and Dike, the Eternal Justice, that he brought true copies, and that if he was perjured, he called a curse upon himself and all his line. The Cyprian received his oath with calm satisfaction, then held out the half of a silver shekel broken in ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis

... of inundation. These dikes are generally earth-works, though they are sometimes constructed of baked brick, as in the province of Girgeh. Very rarely are they built of hewn stone, like that great dike of Kosheish which was constructed by Mena in primaeval times, in order to divert the course of the Nile from the spot on which he founded Memphis.[7] The network of canals began near Silsilis and extended to the sea-board, ...
— Manual Of Egyptian Archaeology And Guide To The Study Of Antiquities In Egypt • Gaston Camille Charles Maspero

... dim and watery, as did indeed the whole firmament; for in some places black clouds were still visible, threatening a continuance of tempestuous weather. The road appeared washed and gravelly; every dike was full of yellow water; and every little rivulet and larger stream dashed its hoarse murmur into our ears; every blast, too, was cold, fierce, and wintry, sometimes driving us back to a standstill, and again, when a turn in the road would bring it in our backs, ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton

... And drizzled by the ceaseless spray, Midst groan of rock and roar of stream, The wizard waits prophetic dream. Nor distant rests the Chief;—but hush! See, gliding slow through mist and bush, The hermit gains yon rock, and stands To gaze upon our slumbering bands. Seems he not, Malise, dike a ghost, That hovers o'er a slaughtered host? Or raven on the blasted oak, That, watching while the deer is broke, His ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott

... was extraordinary. Sitting on the veranda, bombarding the direction of the foreshore with that huge deliberate fusillade of cigar smoke, he talked of home, of his boyhood on the dike at Volendam, and of his mother, who, bless her! was still alive to ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... flooding of the White River and its tributaries were Muncie, Elwood, Anderson, Noblesville, Bloomington, Washington, Newcastle, Rushville, Shelbyville, etc. At Noblesville the river was the highest it had been in thirty-three years, at Muncie a dike in the water plant broke and the city was without fire protection. At Rushville Flat Rock Creek waters rose with a roar, and clanging fire bells warned the people to flee. The entire business section was submerged. One person met death in Muncie; ...
— The True Story of Our National Calamity of Flood, Fire and Tornado • Logan Marshall

... what an ugly place Plaistow is. The land isn't actual fen now, but it was once. And it's quite flat. And there is a great dike, twenty feet wide, oozing through it just oozing, you know; and lots of little dikes, at right angles with the big one. And the fields are all square. And there are no hedges and hardly a tree to be seen ...
— The Belton Estate • Anthony Trollope

... was the story about the road, and the fauld-dike—I ken Sir Thomas was behind there, and I said plainly to the clerk to the trustees that I saw the cloven foot, let them take that as they like.—Would any gentleman, or set of gentlemen, go and drive a road right through the corner of a fauld-dike, ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott

... as we now find it, had not the extraordinary reign, and still more extraordinary character, of Peter the Great interposed certain disturbing—if, indeed, they may not be called in some measure impeding—forces. That giant hand which broke down the long impregnable dike which had hitherto separated Russia from the rest of Europe, and admitted the arts, the learning, and the civilization of the West to rush in with so impetuous a flood, fertilizing as it came, but also destroying and sweeping away something that was valuable, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various

... in dikes, which are only the cracks in rocks filled by materials poured into them at some period of eruption when the melted masses within the earth were thrown out and flowed like water into any inequality or depression of the surface around. The walls enclosing such a dike are often found to be completely altered by contact with its burning contents, and to have assumed a character quite different from the rocks of which they make a part; while the mass itself which fills the fissure shows by the character of its crystallization that it has cooled more ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various

... for her husband's loss, which had been suspended during the extremity of the child's danger, now returned on Magdalen with the force of an augmented torrent, which has borne down the dam dike that for a while interrupted ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott

... the fearless toil, Enrich your nations with the nurturing spoil; O'er my vast vales let yellow harvests wave, Quay the calm ports and dike the lawns I lave. Win from the waters every stagnant fen, Where truant rills escape my conscious ken; And break those remnant rocks that still impede My current crowding thro the ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow

... the island might meet for the purposes of religious worship, were they to be ejected from the cottage erected by Mr. Swanson, in which they had worshipped hitherto. We reexamined, in the passing, the pitch stone dike mentioned in a former chapter, and the charnel cave of Frances; but I found nothing to add to my former descriptions, and little to modify, save that perhaps the cave appeared less dark, in at least the outer half of ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller

... by a dike, which, when the dike is broken, spread abroad through all the country, so the Moors, no longer kept in column by the example of Dardinel, fled in all directions. Rinaldo despised too much such easy victories to pursue them; he wished for no combats but with brave men. At the same time, the other ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch

... tends to sink them still lower. "Tetens declares," says Kohl, "that in some places the dikes have gradually sunk to the depth of sixty or even a hundred feet." [Footnote: Die Inseln und Marschen der Herzogthamer Schleswig und Holstein, iii., p. 151.] For these reasons, the processes of dike-building have been almost everywhere again and again repeated, and thus the total expenditure of money and of labor upon the works in question is much greater than would appear from an estimate of the actual cost of diking-in a given extent of coast-land and draining ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh

... good an' satisfied now," she repeated in endless reproach. "I hope you're good an' satisfied. You was bound you'd make a farmer out of him, an' now you finished the job. You better try your hand at Dike now ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber

... touch!" cries George; "bring the turf; Fred—I'm ready!" The water of the burn is rushing violently through the narrow outlet in the "dike." A heavy stone is dropped into the gap, and turf ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne

... France, Spain, and Austria would give way as soon as they should see him powerful, dictating laws to the world. Germany and Great Britain, indeed all the Protestant countries, would also inevitably be conquered, for the papacy was the only dike that could be opposed to error, which must some day fatally succumb in its efforts against such a barrier. Politically, however, Santobono had declared himself for Germany, for he considered that France needed to be crushed before she would throw herself into the arms of the Holy Father. And thus ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola

... A dike, be it understood, is a hole in the earth made visible. That is to say, in old days, when mountains were much loftier than they are now, various agencies brought it to pass that they split and cracked and yawned down to the innermost cores of their being in such hideous ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White

... "The great dike of West Kappel is there," said the pilot to Captain Kendall, as he pointed to the land on the northern shore ...
— Dikes and Ditches - Young America in Holland and Belguim • Oliver Optic

... outcome of her experiment, and when the last announcement appeared, a stream of letters and inquiries poured upon her desk.... The reporters returned in greater strength than ever.... It sometimes seemed to Mary that the whole dike was beginning to crack.... Even Jove must have felt a sense of awe when he saw the effect of his ...
— Mary Minds Her Business • George Weston



Words linked to "Dike" :   butch, slang, close in, dyke, derogation, enclose, patois, milldam, argot, lingo, Glen Canyon Dam, Hoover Dam, shut in, gay woman, disparagement, inclose, weir, cant, lesbian, jargon, Aswan High Dam, High Dam, vernacular, tribade, dam



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