dyke up

verb

To build a dyke along (a body of water or a piece of land).

Meanings

verbdyke up (third-person singular simple present dykes up, present participle dyking up, simple past and past participle dyked up)

present singular third person dykes up · participle present dyking up · participle past dyked up · past dyked up · alternative dike up

  1. transitiveTo build a dyke along (a body of water or a piece of land).

    Following the spate of 1988, on September 29 of that year Flench president François Mitterrand proposed to the UN General Assembly nothing less than the dyking up of the three rivers.

    1991 June 24, J-F Marquis, “Disaster and underdevelopment”, in International Viewpoint, number 209, Paris: Presse-Edition-Communication, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 10
    2 more examples

    Plumstead Marshes and Barking Level made one morass, four miles wide at least, or nearer five, drowned twice a day into a great level sheet of water, until some civilisation came to dyke up the tidal stream and confine it to the central bed, which it had scoured in its windings through such a desolation.

    1912 December, Hilaire Belloc, chapter II, in The River of London, London & Edinburgh: T. N. Foulis, →OCLC, page 21

    The Nguyễn dynasty allocated a massive financial investment to the domain of hydraulics that made it possible to dyke up the whole Delta. This occurred despite the fact that the country’s capital was transferred to Huế, after centuries of being embedded in the heart of the Red River Delta.

    2011, Olivier Tessier, chapter 4, in Mart A. Stewart, Peter A. Coclains, editors, Environmental Change and Agricultural Sustainability in the Mekong Delta, Springer Science+Business Media, →DOI, →ISBN, →OCLC, pages 66–67
Cite this entry
APA

dyke up. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/dyke%20up

MLA

“dyke up.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/dyke%20up. Accessed November 4, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “dyke up,” accessed November 4, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/dyke%20up.

Source: dyke up on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.