culvert

English

A small river entering a culvert.

Culvert headwall

Etymology

Origin obscure, with a number of possible etymologies suggested:

• a dialectal word,
• a word related to the name of the now-forgotten inventor,
• a derivation from French couvert (“covered”), although couvert is not used in this sense and the French translation of culvert is ponceau or buse de drainage,
• a derivation from an unrecorded Dutch word, possibly *coul-vaart, a combination of Dutch coul-, from French couler (“to flow”), and Dutch vaart (“a trip by boat, a canal”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈkʌlvə(ɹ)t/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

Noun

culvert (plural culverts)

1. A channel crossing under a road or railway for the draining of water.
   • 1922 October 26, Virginia Woolf, Jacob’s Room, Richmond, London: […] Leonard & Virginia Woolf at the Hogarth Press, →OCLC; republished London: The Hogarth Press, 1960, →OCLC, page 98:

     A raft of twigs stayed upon a stone, suddenly detached itself, and floated towards the culvert.

   • 1996, Janette Turner Hospital, Oyster, paperback edition, Virago Press, page 167:

     After she left, I ran away for a day, and hid myself, solitary, in a culvert under the railway lines.

   • 2024 July 15, Heidi Julavits, “I Put Up a Fence in Maine. Why Did It Cause Such a Fuss?”, in The New York Times‎^[1], →ISSN:

     It was on the leisurely upswing when, 16 years after we bought our house, a woman driving a fancy S.U.V. jumped the culvert, plowed through the hedge, jumped the culvert again and sped off.

Derived terms

• Thorpe Culvert

Translations

channel for draining water

• Bulgarian: водосток (bg) m (vodostok)
• Catalan: claveguera (ca) f, desguàs (ca) m
• Czech: propustek (cs) m
• Dutch: duiker (nl) m, grondzijl f, verlaat (nl) n, zinker (nl) m
• Esperanto: tunelponto, torentdrenilo, drenilo
• Finnish: siltarumpu (fi)
• French: ponceau (fr) m, drain (fr), buse (fr)
• German: Düker (de)
• Greek:

  Ancient: κορχυρέα f (korkhuréa)

• Hungarian: vízátvezető cső (hu), áteresz (hu)
• Ido: ponteto (io), ponto (io)
• Maori: karawata
• Norwegian:

  Bokmål: kulvert (no) m, stikkrenne (no) m or f (smaller in size)

• Polish: przepust (pl) m
• Portuguese: galeria de drenagem f, passagem hidráulica f
• Russian: водопропускная труба f (vodopropusknaja truba)
• Spanish: cloaca (es) f, tajea (es)
• Swedish: kulvert (sv) c, trumma (sv) c, vägtrumma (sv) c
• Tagalog: alkantarilya
• Turkish: menfez (tr)

Verb

culvert (third-person singular simple present culverts, present participle culverting, simple past and past participle culverted)

1. To channel (a stream of water) through a culvert.
   • 2020, Ben Aaronovitch, False Value, Gollancz, pages 234–235:

     This led to a great deal of straightening and culverting, which in turn led to a massive loss of biodiversity.

Middle English

Alternative forms

• colwarde, culvard, culvart, kilvarde

Etymology

From Old French colvert, from Late Latin collībertus.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈkulvɛrt/, /ˈkulward/

Adjective

culvert

1. vile, nefarious

References

• “culvert, n.”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007.