Thursday word: riprap

[prettygoodword.livejournal.com]

riprap (RIP-rap) - n., a quantity of broken stone used in a foundation, embankment, et cet.; a foundation or wall of stones thrown together irregularly.


Used to strengthen slopes of soft soil and prevent erosion, in places such as river and harbor banks, roadway embankments, and so on, piled with or without mortar. As in, that's what that's called. Can also be used as a verb, to build with or strengthen with stones. The origin is obscure, but it's apparently a reduplicative form of rap in the sense of a blow/strike, and it's been around since the 1570s.

The children scrambled down the riprap to the lake water.

(To readers in the States, have a safe and happy Thanksgiving, whether it be on or away from a shoreline.)

---L.

Comments

[mount-oregano.livejournal.com]

Many years ago in Milwaukee, where I lived, they were building a riprap embankment on Lake Michigan with stones they were blasting out of a deep tunnel for sewerage -- stones so big one of them was a load that filled a semi-trailer and could make my apartment building shake as it passed. Riprap can be awesome. But it takes a lot to control Lake Michigan.

[prettygoodword.livejournal.com]

Yes -- it does indeed.