Other forms: ditches, ditched, ditching
A ditch is a long narrow channel dug to carry water away. A roadside ditch, in the ditch, dig a ditch.
Field and roadside drainage depends on them and they need clearing, which is a maintenance job nobody notices until a road floods. As a verb, to ditch something means to abandon it, and to ditch an aircraft is to land it on water. Note that dyke and ditch are the same word — one is the trench and the other the bank.
1nounditchA long narrow channel dug to carry water away.
“The car skidded off the road and ended up in a ditch full of water.”
2verbabandonTo abandon something.
“The car broke down, so we ditched it and walked the rest of the way.”
ditch is a channel.
Old English dic meant a trench or moat. Dyke is the same word, and came to mean the bank rather than the cut.
Old English
dīċ
Middle English
dich
English, today
ditch
Built from
From Middle English dich, from Old English dīċ. From Middle English dich, from Old English dīċ (“trench, moat”) from Proto-Germanic dīkaz (compare Swedish dike, Icelandic díki, West Frisian dyk (“dam”), Dutch dijk (“dam”), German Teich (“pond”)), from Proto-Indo-European dʰeygʷ- (“to stick, set up”) (compare Latin fīgō (“to affix, fasten”), Lithuanian diegti (“to prick; plant”), dýgsti (“to geminate, grow”)). Doublet of dike.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in Farm & Countryside