Bunds

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. Embankments or earthworks used to retain water or control flooding are referred to as
2. These structures, often built for irrigation or flood protection, help manage water flow in agricultural settings
3. Earth mounds constructed for agricultural drainage or flood management serve to direct water and protect land

Etymology: The plural of "bund" is "bunds," and the noun has two unrelated histories that happen to meet in the sense given here. The embankment meaning comes from Hindustani "band," a word from Classical Persian meaning something tied, bound or dammed, which is also the root of "bandh," a Hindi word for a dam or barrier. The sense of a raised earth wall or dike around a field, reservoir or river came into English through British colonial India, where such works were built for irrigation and flood control. The other "bund" is a German word meaning alliance or league, as in "Bundesrepublik," the Federal Republic. It is a doublet of "bond" and "band," which share a Germanic ancestor with it, so English speakers hearing "bund" for a league and "bund" for a levee are dealing with two words that never shared a meaning. Only the agricultural sense is relevant here.

Synonyms: embankments, banks, dikes, levees, mounds