dugout
/ˈdʌɡaʊt
/noun
1A trench that is dug and roofed over as a shelter for troops: the German gun crews kept in their dugouts...
- Areas within the trenches, known as dugouts, were furnished with a table and chairs and a few wire-mesh bunks for resting.
- With much of the ground below sea level, there was a constant problem with the water table filling trenches and dugouts with water.
- If you get away from potential targets and into a slit trench or dugout, any good insurance company would issue you a policy on the spot.
1.1An underground air-raid or nuclear shelter.Because the dugout is entirely underground it is a cinch to heat....
- From 1916, he guided the siting of mine tunnels, and later dugouts.
1.2A low shelter at the side of a sports field for a team’s coaches and substitutes.After the game, the kids were lined up along the rail from the dugout to shallow right field, with their scorecards and baseballs in hand, hoping for an autograph....
- The equivalent would be driving an outfielder from the dugout to center field, then leaving him there to do the real work on his own.
- I accompanied Dad and the team on the plane, on the team bus rides, in the press box at each game, and even an occasion in the dugout and on the field during batting practice.
2 (also dugout canoe) A canoe made from a hollowed tree trunk.The afternoon light was fading, and after some negotiations with the locals, I found myself in a dugout canoe being paddled around the edge of the lake near the crater walls that disappeared into the clear depths....
- Delighted, Jim produced a photograph of himself as a forestry officer, 90 years later, crossing those same rivers in a dugout canoe paddled by natives and clutching his rifle.
- We paddled a dugout canoe across the river to the village burial ground, where the bodies of these tiny victims of the fossil fuel industry lay.