Ditch

How to spell ditch

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce ditch

What does ditch mean?

1. nounA narrow channel dug into the ground to hold or carry water, often beside a road or field.
2. verbTo get rid of or abandon something or someone, usually abruptly.

Ditch in a sentence

• noun

  Heavy rain filled the ditch along the lane within an hour.

• verb

  They decided to ditch the original plan and start again.

• noun

  The farmer cleared the ditch so the field would drain properly.

• verb

  She chose to ditch her old phone after years of glitches.

Where does ditch come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a native English word descended from the Old English dīc, which meant a dug-out trench and, confusingly, also the bank thrown up beside it. The two senses split apart over time into our modern pair 'ditch' (the hollow you dig) and 'dike' or 'dyke' (the raised barrier), even though they began as one word. The root is Germanic, with close cousins in the Dutch dijk and the German Teich (a pond), all tracing back to a sense of digging. The casual verb meaning 'to abandon or get rid of', as in ditching a plan, grew up much later in informal use, probably from the literal image of running something off the road into a roadside ditch. Because the word is short and phonetically spelled, the only real trap is remembering the silent-looking 't' before the 'ch', a pattern shared with 'pitch', 'witch', and 'match'.

How the word is built

• ditch (from Old English dīc: a dug trench or embankment); single root, no affixes