1. trans. To enclose, shut in, confine, or protect by banks; esp. to confine the course of (a river) by a mound, dyke, or raised structure of stone or other material.
1700. Tyrrell, Hist. Eng., II. 814. No River … shall be imbanked.
1770. Monthly Rev., 490. Embank the north side of the Thames.
1796. Morse, Amer. Geog., II. 526. It was a very lofty … mound … embanked one side of the river.
1808. J. Barlow, Columb., I. 517. York leads his wave, imbank’d in flowery pride.
1853. Kane, Grinnell Exp., xl. (1856), 363. This hole was critically circular, beveled from the under surface, and symmetrically embanked round with the pulpaceous [printed pulpacious] material which he had excavated from the ice.
b. To embank out: to exclude (the sea) by embankments.
1822. in Picton, L’pool Munic. Rec. (1886), II. 353. To embank out the sea at that place.
† 2. intr. Of a ship: To run aground. Obs. [Cf. F. embanquer in this sense.]
a. 1649. Drumm. of Hawth., Hist. Jas. IV. Wks. (1711), 64. The English Ships … embanked, and stuck moor’d upon the Shelves.
3. To cover with embankments; to cut into embankments.
1872. Ruskin, Fors Clav., II. xix. 13. The operation of embanking hill-sides, so as to stay the rain-flow, is a work of enormous cost and difficulty.
