Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A steep slope or long cliff that results from erosion or faulting and separates two relatively level areas of differing elevations.
- n. A steep slope in front of a fortification.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. In fortification, ground cut away, nearly vertically, about a position in order to render it inaccessible to an enemy.
- n. Hence The precipitous side of any hill or rock; the abrupt face of a high ridge of land; a cliff.
Wiktionary
- n. A steep descent or declivity; steep face or edge of a ridge; ground about a fortified place, cut away nearly vertically to prevent hostile approach.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. A steep descent or declivity; steep face or edge of a ridge; ground about a fortified place, cut away nearly vertically to prevent hostile approach. See scarp.
WordNet 3.0
- n. a steep artificial slope in front of a fortification
- n. a long steep slope or cliff at the edge of a plateau or ridge; usually formed by erosion
Etymologies
- From French escarpement. (Wiktionary)
Examples
“To make it more spectacular the escarpment is sliced by multiple canyons and valleys that plummet abruptly to the semi-desert African plane thousands of feet below.”
“Farther inland, every sandstone and limestone escarpment is the color of bone.”
“Toniná, at seven levels up against that escarpment, is the highest construction among all ancient Maya cities and a spectacular sight.”
“The lowlands below the escarpment are a complex of Carboniferous/Permian metamorphic and sedimentary rocks (slate, phyllite, sandstone and conglomerate).”
“The escarpment was a jumbled blanket of gray stone outcrops and grass dried almost white by the heat of Furnace Sky.”
“-- This mountain is dominated by a bedrock escarpment, that is not inaccessible, but difficult to reach; it seems to be entirely composed of fossil shellfish contained in blackish coarse marble.”
“The escarpment is a 650-mile rock formation that arcs from Niagara Falls in New York to the Horicon Marsh in Wisconsin.”
“There is a remarkable “forest” of cedars along the Niagara escarpment which is essentially a cliff that goes for 600 km.”
“It straddles the escarpment which is the major watershed between Namaqualand in the west, and Bushmanland in the east.”
““The great Thinker Marmel believed that the escarpment is a sheet of the world sliding over another sheet — the one we’re sitting on.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘escarpment’.
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Landforms
A Cyclopedia of Landforms.
plain, mountain, canyon, cliff, hill, arch, cave, plateau, mesa, butte, chimney, peneplain and 169 more...
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Carp
carp, carping, carpet, pilocarpine, parthenocarpy, carper, basidiocarp, acarpous, apocarpous, ascocarp, Brussels carpet, carpe diem and 104 more...
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Jesse's random
bathos, dragoman, tessellated, escutcheon, eikon, mondaine, basilisk, ciborium, rubric, machicolation, jet, defalcation and 198 more...
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Visual landscapes
texture, stipple, variegated, topography, denuded, granular, pebbly, tundra, veldt, savannah, steppes, mesa and 5 more...
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Northern Territory
The Northern Territory of Australia. Suggestions welcome.
win-a-croc, angurugu, intervention, mala, qantas, ochre, nitmiluk, the ghan, wet season, dry season, nyinyikay, dragonfly and 94 more...
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maygra
apropos, advantageous, perception, discombobulated, adumbrate, apogee, perihelion, mortmain, solitudinous, mediastinus, asumbrative, traveler and 498 more...
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the earth
Planetary chaos: terrain, landscape and geology excluding rocks. (See "the geologist" list for the latter.)
butte, karst, caldera, mesa, laccolith, cwm, crater, alp, precipice, sierra, badlands, prairie and 122 more...
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azd's Words
adamantine, abatial, ablate, ablative, abrogate, accretive, acromegaly, acrostic, actinism, actinic, acuity, adduce and 968 more...
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Nabokov vocabulary
verisimilitude, geminate, pedantic, intervestibular, equilibrist, nictitating, anastomosis, quiddity, torus, cacahuete, undulation, pensum and 135 more...
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NTDW1
template, modal, sublingual, tandem, polycentric, septuagenarian, token, irrevocable, denotive, augural, aberrant, phlebotomy and 1188 more...
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artoparts's Words
illation, finite, edify, abide, abrade, vouch, amiss, vociferate, perusing, techantiquery, rigamarole, holon and 615 more...
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sionnach's Words
contumely, fomite, holmgang, poltroon, eleemosynary, obsidian, nugatory, grindcore, felch, recrudescent, pyx, parenteral and 3271 more...
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xstala's Words
oneiric, inchoate, clandestine, tangerine, brusque, clout, benedictine, argonaut, juniper, tulle, zealot, vesper and 175 more...
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Spelling Bee list 2011
Abalone, ablution, absolution, aboriginally, abstemious, academician, acclamation, accommodation, acculturation, acetic, acetone, acme and 590 more...
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Landscape
riparian, littoral, talus, fen, ambit, savanna, remnant prairie, shortgrass prairie, tallgrass prairie, marsh, swamp, marshy and 199 more...
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Oh them words, them words
My fancies, my cudgels.
liquescent, ferly, lamia, basilisk, trigon, fantast, stirp, tristesse, enfleurage, stemma, formicary, lacrimation and 346 more...
Tweets
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