culvert

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culvert

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Origin obscure,^[1] with a number of possible etymologies suggested:

• a dialectal word,
• a word related to the name of the now-forgotten inventor,^[1]
• a derivation from French couvert (“covered”), although couvert is not used in this sense and the French translation of culvert is ponceau or buse de drainage,
• a derivation from an unrecorded Dutch word, possibly *coul-vaart, a combination of Dutch coul-, from French couler (“to flow”), and Dutch vaart (“a trip by boat, a canal”).

• IPA^(key): /ˈkʌlvə(ɹ)t/

• Audio (Southern England):

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culvert (plural culverts)

1. A channel crossing under a road or railway for the draining of water.
   • 1922 October 26, Virginia Woolf, Jacob’s Room, Richmond, London: Leonard & Virginia Woolf at the Hogarth Press, →OCLC; republished London: The Hogarth Press, 1960, →OCLC, page 98:

     A raft of twigs stayed upon a stone, suddenly detached itself, and floated towards the culvert.

   • 1996, Janette Turner Hospital, Oyster, paperback edition, Virago Press, page 167:

     After she left, I ran away for a day, and hid myself, solitary, in a culvert under the railway lines.

   • 2024 July 15, Heidi Julavits, “I Put Up a Fence in Maine. Why Did It Cause Such a Fuss?”, in The New York Times‎, →ISSN:

     It was on the leisurely upswing when, 16 years after we bought our house, a woman driving a fancy S.U.V. jumped the culvert, plowed through the hedge, jumped the culvert again and sped off.

culvert (third-person singular simple present culverts, present participle culverting, simple past and past participle culverted)

1. To channel (a stream of water) through a culvert.
   • 2020, Ben Aaronovitch, False Value, Gollancz, pages 234–235:

     This led to a great deal of straightening and culverting, which in turn led to a massive loss of biodiversity.

• colwarde, culvard, culvart, kilvarde

From Old French colvert, from Late Latin collībertus.

• IPA^(key): /ˈkulvɛrt/, /ˈkulward/

culvert

1. vile, nefarious

• “culvert, n.”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007.