Embankment

How to spell embankment

10 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce embankment

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does embankment mean?

1. nounA long ridge or wall of earth or stone built to hold back water or to carry a road or railway.

Embankment in a sentence

• The railway runs along a steep embankment above the valley.

• Flood water rose almost to the top of the river embankment.

Where does embankment come from?

Language of origin: Old Norse

The word is built from the verb 'embank', which joined the prefix 'en-' or 'em-', meaning roughly 'to put into or upon', to the noun 'bank'. That noun 'bank' meant a raised ridge or mound of earth and reached English from a Scandinavian source related to Old Norse 'bakki', a slope or riverbank, which is also a relative of the financial 'bank' (originally a money dealer's bench or counter). The 'em-' spelling appears instead of 'en-' because the prefix shifts before the lip-closing 'b' sound, the same reason we write 'embrace' and 'embed'. 'Embankment' itself surfaced in the late 1700s, an age of canal building and river management, to name an artificial bank of earth or stone raised to hold back water or to carry a road or railway. The double-step build, prefix plus bank plus suffix, is worth remembering: the spelling trap is simply the silent join, since people hear one smooth word but it is really 'em + bank + ment'.

How the word is built

• em- (variant of en-: to put on/into)
• bank (a raised ridge of earth)
• -ment (noun-forming suffix)