Moat meaning

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A moat is a deep, broad ditch, either dry or filled with water , that is dug and surrounds a castle , fortification , building , or town, historically to provide it with a preliminary line of defence. In some places moats evolved into more extensive water defences, including natural or artificial lakes, dams and sluices. In older fortifications, such as hillforts , they are usually referred to simply as ditches , although the function is similar. In later periods, moats or water defences may be largely ornamental. They could also act as a sewer. Some of the earliest evidence of moats has been uncovered around ancient Egyptian castles. One example is at Buhen , a castle excavated in Nubia.

Moat meaning

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These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'moat. Send us feedback about these examples. Middle English mote , from Anglo-French mote, motte mound, moat. Moazagotl cloud. Accessed 2 Mar. Nglish: Translation of moat for Spanish Speakers. Subscribe to America's largest dictionary and get thousands more definitions and advanced search—ad free!

Paying attention and listening intently: talking about concentration. Add to word list Add to word list. Examples of moat. The seven-metre-high wall that enclosed the dockyards was surrounded by a deep and wide moat. From the Cambridge English Corpus. Across the nation windowless inward-turning shopping malls are surrounded by moat -like parking lots. Each hut was surrounded by a water-filled moat to exclude ants and spiders. Initially, the outer moat had marked its boundaries. With population pressure rising, some residents petitioned to fill-in the palace moat and use that land for new construction. Until the middle of the seventeenth century, the city magistrates' jurisdiction extended only over the area within the outer moat.

Moat meaning

With the rollout of the new campaign format, Snapchat is widening its moat against TikTok and other challengers for short-form video budgets. Broadcast and cable are highly geographic but the franchise value becomes higher because of the regulatory moat. But over the years, cloistered in their mountain keep, complete with moat , Bender and Patton became ever more reclusive. Thinking to escape and summon assistance from the cantonment, Douglas mounted the wall and leaped into the moat. The house itself was built nearly two hundred years earlier and was later surrounded by a moat as a further means of defense. But the Scots tower proved useless, for its wheels stuck in the mud of the moat , and it could not be got up to the wall.

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English Quiz. Read more…. This is the moat useful analogy for engineers, since it is capable of yielding fairly precise quantitative information and it can be applied to a wide variety of problems. Examples of 'moat' in a sentence moat. Clear explanations of natural written and spoken English. Nuclear Threat Initiative. Love words? Here are a few phrases you can use to express sympathy and condolences. To top. Essential British English. Primary School. Defensive ditch surrounding a fortification or town. The Times.

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The structure has a large central uplift surrounded by a moat and a peripheral terrain with rotated fault blocks. Need a translator? The Times. Video pronunciations. For example, the new location of the Embassy of the United States in London , opened in , includes a moat among its security features - the first moat built in England for more than a century. Traditional Chinese. Dry moats that cut across the narrow part of a spur or peninsula are called neck ditches. Christianity Today Follow us. Click on the arrows to change the translation direction. Times, Sunday Times All rights reserved. Across the nation windowless inward-turning shopping malls are surrounded by moat -like parking lots. The chronology of the Iron Age'moats' of Northeast Thailand.