[ad. Fr. escarper, f. escarpe: see prec. The aphetic form SCARP is the more usual.] trans. To make into an escarp, to cut or form into a steep slope: to furnish with scarps.
1728. [? De Foe], Capt. G. Carleton’s Mem., 100–1. The Glacis was all escarp’d upon the live Rock.
1852. Lever, Daltons, II. 265. Carried along the mountain-side by a track escarped in the rock itself.
1855. Bailey, Mystic, 69. The angels wrought the mountains, bulk by bulk, And chain by chain, serrated or escarped.
1884. World, 27 Feb., 6/2. Billows of land, washed and escarped by ancient seas.
Hence Escarped ppl. a., cut out in the form of an escarp.
1853. Kane, Grinnell Exp., vi. (1856), 48. The dike … rising up … into escarped terraces nearly 1400 feet high.
1859. Jephson, Brittany, v. 47. The escarped rock upon which they were constructed.
