The Collaborative International Dictionary
Trench \Trench\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Trenched; p. pr. & vb. n. Trenching.] [OF. trenchier to cut, F. trancher; akin to Pr. trencar, trenchar, Sp. trinchar, It. trinciare; of uncertain origin.]
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To cut; to form or shape by cutting; to make by incision, hewing, or the like.
The wide wound that the boar had trenched In his soft flank.
--Shak.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.
--Shak. -
(Fort.) To fortify by cutting a ditch, and raising a rampart or breastwork with the earth thrown out of the ditch; to intrench.
--Pope.No more shall trenching war channel her fields.
--Shak. To cut furrows or ditches in; as, to trench land for the purpose of draining it.
To dig or cultivate very deeply, usually by digging parallel contiguous trenches in succession, filling each from the next; as, to trench a garden for certain crops.
Wiktionary
vb. (present participle of trench English)
WordNet
Usage examples of "trenching".
I have in the last few foregoing pages been trenching on somewhat dangerous ground, but who can leave such a work as the Sacro Monte without being led to trench on this ground, and who that trenches upon it can fail to better understand the lesson of the Sacro Monte itself?
Here, then, was fully and broadly asserted the danger resulting from the interference in the question of slavery in the District of Columbia, as trenching upon the rights of the slaveholding States.
Subject Tsosie said that approximately fifteen minutes later he noticed the truck driving out the gate towing a machine which he described as probably a backhoe or some sort of trenching machine loaded on the trailer.
He was all in favour of syringeing roses for green-fly, but was slow to get around to it, and a demand for deep trenching for sweet peas was usually countered by the remark that you ought to see his own sweet peas!