1A long, narrow ditch.

1. 1.1 A narrow ditch dug by troops to provide a place of shelter from enemy fire.
   Example sentencesExamples

   • There were several lines of trenches dug into the area outside the armory, stretching from the pavement all across the hundred yards of lawn to the barricaded doors.
   • While he managed to fight as far as the fourth line of trenches, by 3.30 pm practically his whole battalion had been wiped out by German artillery.
   • Belgian highway construction uncovered a nearly intact system of trenches and the remains of seven soldiers of the War to End All Wars.
   • The enemy had returned to the bunker by means of connecting trenches from other emplacements and the platoon was again halted by devastating fire.
   • They dug trenches, emplaced minefields and strung concertina wire.
   • The youth's regiment relieved a command that had manned a series of trenches along a line of woods.
   • They should be, therefore, installed as soon as foxholes are dug and expanded into trenches or commander's observation posts are erected.
   • Later in the day, the army dug out fresh trenches and put large concrete slabs in front of them so they could never be moved by bare hands alone.
   • I stood in a deep trench with members of various companies waiting for the whistle to jump out and low crawl to the barbed wire.
   • The frontline trenches are preserved, and you can see just how close the fighters were - literally a grenade's throw apart.
   • By Christmas 1914, the front had ossified into a continuous line of trenches from the North Sea to the Swiss border.
   • The number of trenches and sandbagged gun positions has tripled in two weeks.
   • On battlefields dominated by machine guns and artillery, men at the front huddled in deep trenches or other battle positions.
   • He thinks to himself that, if it were not for war, he would not be about to go off and kill the fellow just like himself in the trenches on the other side of no man's land, but would be sitting down and having a drink with the man.
   • And, much to the horror of the ground commanders of World War I, they suddenly realised that the Germans had three rather than the accepted two lines of trenches.
   • It's like the troops appearing from the trenches on Christmas Day for a quick game of football before the sun sets and they return to their killing posts.
   • During their four years of occupation, the Germans had created four successive, mutually supporting defensive lines, linked by trenches and interlocking arcs of fire.
   • As a sniper, he spent most of his time between the lines of trenches, in ‘No Man's Land ’, hunting other snipers.
   • Turner continued leading his men over three lines of hostile trenches, cleaning up each one as they advanced.
   • Usually about six feet wide and seven feet deep, the trenches were guarded by barbed wire and machine-gun posts.
2. 1.2trenches A connected system of trenches forming an army's line.
   Example sentencesExamples

   • The first line of trenches was called front line trenches.
   • British gunfire should have destroyed the barbed wire defences in front of the German trenches, but it had not, as the men found out when they crawled and ran towards the German lines.
   • Getting decent hot food from the field kitchens to the front line trenches could be impossible when a battle was either imminent or in full flow.
   • Somewhere over that gentle rise were their own trenches and, a little farther, the trenches of the Army.
   • Each night more men withdrew in silence until only two hundred and fifty soldiers maintained the front line of trenches where a hundred and thirty thousand had previously defended.
   • Instead, I chose a collection of 300 World War I letters written from the trenches, tents and field hospitals of Flanders.
   • Half a mile out of Maricourt, we crossed the line of the British trenches.
   • In places, the Canadian and German soldiers were less than 25 metres from one another on the front line trenches.
   • In evocative detail William's diary describes the first time he went over the top of the trenches on June 28, 1915.
   • Back in the trenches, he offered a prize to the first platoon to kick its football up to the German trenches on the day of the attack.
   • We somehow took the second line of the German trenches.
   • The military failure in Gallipoli had pushed the emphasis of the war back to the Western Front - to the trenches and the lack of movement.
   • The logic behind this was so that the artillery guns would destroy the German trenches and barbed wire placed in front of the trenches.
3. 1.3the trenches The battlefields of northern France and Belgium in World War I.
   the slaughter in the trenches created a new cynicism

   figurative entry-level teachers are taught the latest classroom techniques by colleagues with experience in the trenches

   Example sentencesExamples

   • The family story is that he died because of the chronic effects of being gassed in the trenches of France in World War I.
   • My father was a soldier of the Great War, fighting in the trenches of France because of a shot fired in a city he'd never heard of called Sarajevo.
   • The battles in the trenches were long and resulted in much more loss of life while the naval battles in most cases helped bring about the end of the war.
   • My dad served in the trenches in the First World War and my mum's brother was killed on the Somme.
   • Tolkien was said to have based the battle scenes on his own experiences in the trenches of the First World War.
   • After art school he served in the trenches throughout the First World War, an experience which produced one of his major works and left him with a lifelong interest in warfare and soldiers.
   • He's been in the trenches on a lot of issues, like veterans care.
   • The fact that it is also set in the trenches of the First World War only helps.
   • It was not until the spring of 1918 that angel rumours were again spread through the elaborate grapevine that had developed in the trenches of the Western Front.
   • But, you know, we've been in the trenches on a number of issues that are important to communities all across this country.
   • The plaque commemorates some 600 Dawson men who went off to fight in the trenches of France and Belgium.
   • To compound whatever he saw or experienced in the trenches of the First World War, the man was an alcoholic and a drug addict.
   • The often bestial conditions in the trenches of the First World War were thought to have permitted the manufacture of only the crudest items.
   • My great uncles fought in the trenches in the first world war and my father's generation were involved in the second world war.
   • In the trenches during the First World War, two foot-soldiers come upon the unconscious figure of an officer.
   • It was famously sung in the trenches of the First World War by Welsh regiments to keep their spirits up, and it's a firm favourite with Welsh rugby crowds.
   • Uncle Charlie had been in the trenches in the First World War and come back ‘shell shocked.’
   • We all found him a very entertaining fellow, as he helped us pass the long, boring hours in the trenches of France.
   • My dad never knew his own dad - he was killed in the trenches during the First World War but I have never heard a bitter word uttered by my dad towards the German nation.
   • The twentieth century was a dark century, born in the trenches of the First World War and coming of age in the concentration camps of the Holocaust.
4. 1.4 A long, narrow, deep depression in the ocean floor, typically one running parallel to a plate boundary and marking a subduction zone.
   Example sentencesExamples

   • As the name implies, volcanic island arcs, which closely parallel the trenches, are generally curved.
   • They filled the seas 400 million years ago, and perhaps a few are lurking in some deep sea trench.
   • The trench runs roughly parallel to the west coast of Sumatra about 125 miles offshore.
   • The descending mantle current tends to drag the crust down with it, forming a deep trench or piling up young mountains.
   • He explained to me that there were probably about 20 or so divers in the lake, and that they explore the rocky lake bottom which apparently also includes a deep trench.
   • These trenches are where subduction is happening.
   • In the Indian Ocean, deep trenches are confined to the southern coast of Indonesia, and tsunamis are rare.
   • Now a lot of the time that's just because we're used to breathing air and having nice warm temperatures, and of course it's not a problem for animals that live down there and there's life down to the bottom of the very deepest ocean trenches.
   • The Solomon Sea, north of Cape Vogel, is characterized by deep trenches, some reaching depths of nearly 30,000 feet.
   • McCartney's voice can take some getting used to, but the wonders of reverb on songs like ‘Metropolitan’ and ‘Northern Light’ bring to mind images of music bubbling up from the depths of an ocean trench; it's a nice touch.
   • The current angled across the shelf and spilled in a deeper trench below.
   • A shelf of coral and limestone jutting into the dark abyss of the ocean trench to the west of the islands, it offers a ringside place at the marine bonanza represented by a strong upwelling current.
   • The most conspicuous outboard structure is the accretionary wedge that lies just continentward of the ocean trench, the bathymetric manifestation of the subduction zone.
   • The area outside the store was like that of some deep oceanic trench.
   • They are a success story from the rocky tide pools of the zones near the surface, all the way down to the deepest trenches which score the ocean floor.
   • Deep marine trenches with thermal vent ecosystems independent of solar energy add to the enormous complexity of our biodiversity.
   • We can clearly see the subducting plate boundary at least 85 km from the trench and probably much farther.
   • There is also an observed parallel association of trenches and island arcs.
   • However, in this instance, the crew was seen throwing large plastic bags filled with garbage into a deep trench located off Pattaya's coastline.

1with object Dig a trench or trenches in (the ground)

1. 1.1 Turn over the earth of (a field or garden) by digging a succession of adjoining ditches.
   Example sentencesExamples

   • Here John McPhail, the gardener, was at work trenching in 1828 to create beds for the already burgeoning plant collection.

   Synonyms

   dig a ditch in, provide with ditches, trench, excavate, drain

2trench on/uponarchaic no object Border closely on; encroach on.