trench
Language: English
Part of speech: verb
Pronunciation: ipa: /tɹɛnt͡ʃ/
rhymes: -ɛntʃ
Forms: form: trenches
form: trenching
form: trenched
form: trenched
Etymology: Borrowed into Middle English from Old French trenche. Doublet of tranche and traunch. Possible doublet of English: truncate
Senses: examples: text: Shee is the Judge, Thou Executioner, Or if thou needs would'st trench upon her power, Thou mightst have yet enjoy'd thy crueltie, With some more thrift, and more varietie.
ref: 1640, Ben Jonson, Underwoods, page 68:
text: 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?
ref: 1832, [Isaac Taylor], Saturday Evening. […], London: Holdsworth and Ball, →OCLC:
text: He could make what laws he pleased, as long as those laws did not trench upon property rights.
ref: 1949, Charles Austin Beard, American Government and Politics, page 16:
text: [O]ur ideas, therefore, must trench upon the province of tactics.
ref: 2005, Carl von Clausewitz, J. J. Graham, On War, page 261:
glosses: To invade, especially with regard to the rights or the exclusive authority of another; to encroach.
raw_tags: followed by upon
examples: text: No more shall trenching war channel her fields.
ref: c. 1597 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The First Part of Henry the Fourth, […]”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act I, scene i]:
text: Advanc'd upon the field there stood a mound
Of earth congested, wall'd , and trench'd around
ref: 1715–1720, Homer, translated by Alexander Pope, “(please specify the book of the Iliad or chapter quoted from)”, in The Iliad of Homer, volume (please specify |volume=I to VI), London: […] W[illiam] Bowyer, for Bernard Lintott […], →OCLC:
topics: government
military
politics
war
qualifier: infantry
glosses: To excavate an elongated pit for protection of soldiers and or equipment, usually perpendicular to the line of sight toward the enemy.
topics: archaeology
history
human-sciences
sciences
glosses: To excavate an elongated and often narrow pit.
examples: text: the reason and consequence thereof may trench to point of estate
ref: 1625, Francis [Bacon], “Of Judicature”, in The Essayes […], 3rd edition, London: […] Iohn Haviland for Hanna Barret, →OCLC:
glosses: To have direction; to aim or tend.
examples: text: The wide wound that the boar had trenched / In his soft flank.
ref: 1593, [William Shakespeare], Venus and Adonis, London: […] Richard Field, […], →OCLC:
text: 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.
ref: c. 1590–1591 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Two Gentlemen of Verona”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act III, scene ii]:
glosses: To cut; to form or shape by cutting; to make by incision, hewing, etc.
examples: text: to trench land for the purpose of draining it
glosses: To cut furrows or ditches in.
examples: text: to trench a garden for certain crops
glosses: To dig or cultivate very deeply, usually by digging parallel contiguous trenches in succession, filling each from the next.
Related terms: trenchant