embankment

embank +‎ -ment

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embankment (plural embankments)

1. a long mound of earth, stone, or similar material, usually built for purposes such as to hold back or store water, for protection from weather or enemies, or to support a road or railway.
   • 1886, anonymous author, California Legislature Journal Appendix‎:

     The work to be done under these specifications consists in furnishing all materials and erecting a stone embankment, an earth embankment, and a wharf. The stone embankment will contain about 216,000 tons of stone; the earth embankment about 285,000 cubic yards of broken stone, sand, or other suitable material; and the wharf will contain 501,320 feet of timber, and 802 piles, together with the requisite quantity of cast iron mooring bits, wrought iron spikes, bolts, etc.

   • 1897, anonymous author, The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies‎, U.S. Government Printing Office, pages 981–:

     Sink a trench so the pipe of your water-works will be below ground; have the pump and the mules which work it at such a point and so defended by an epaulement or traverse, or some other defensive embankment, as to shield them.

   • 2006, David P. Billington, Donald Conrad Jackson, Big Dams of the New Deal Era‎, University of Oklahoma Press, →ISBN:

     For thousands of years, societies have stored water, altered river flow, and transformed environments to increase food production or achieve other social or economic goals. The oldest known dam, a small earth embankment structure built about six thousand years ago at Jawa in present-day Jordan, was designed to capture rainfall and increase agricultural production.

• Victoria Embankment