Trench /(?)/

Trench

v. t.

imp. & p. p. Trenched; p. pr. & vb. n. Trenching

  1. To cut; to form or shape by cutting; to make by incision, hewing, or the like.
    The wide wound that the boar had trenched In his soft flank.
    This weak impress of love is as a figure Trenched in ice, which with an hour's heat Dissolves to water, and doth lose its form.
  2. To fortify by cutting a ditch, and raising a rampart or breastwork with the earth thrown out of the ditch; to intrench. (Fort.)
    No more shall trenching war channel her fields.
  3. To cut furrows or ditches in; as, to trench land for the purpose of draining it.
  4. To dig or cultivate very deeply, usually by digging parallel contiguous trenches in succession, filling each from the next; as, to trench a garden for certain crops.

Trench

v. i.
  1. To encroach; to intrench.
    Does it not seem as if for a creature to challenge to itself a boundless attribute, were to trench upon the prerogative of the divine nature?
  2. To have direction; to aim or tend. [R.]
    Like powerful armies, trenching at a town By slow and silent, but resistless, sap.

Phrases & Compounds
To trench at
to make trenches against; to approach by trenches, as a town in besieging it.

Trench

n.
  1. A long, narrow cut in the earth; a ditch; as, a trench for draining land.
  2. An alley; a narrow path or walk cut through woods, shrubbery, or the like. [Obs.]
    In a trench, forth in the park, goeth she.
  3. An excavation made during a siege, for the purpose of covering the troops as they advance toward the besieged place. The term includes the parallels and the approaches. (Fort.)

Phrases & Compounds
To open the trenches
to begin to dig or to form the lines of approach.
Trench cavalier
an elevation constructed (by a besieger) of gabions, fascines, earth, and the like, about half way up the glacis, in order to discover and enfilade the covered way.
Trench plow
a kind of plow for opening land to a greater depth than that of common furrows.