Word.ws English Dictionary

culvert

/ˈkʌlvə(ɹ)t/

culvert noun: a channel crossing under a road or railway for the draining of water.

culvert: a channel crossing under a road or railway for the draining of water
Image: Brendanboshea, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

culvert (plural culverts)

  1. A channel crossing under a road or railway for the draining of water.
    • A raft of twigs stayed upon a stone, suddenly detached itself, and floated towards the culvert.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
    • After she left, I ran away for a day, and hid myself, solitary, in a culvert under the railway lines.1996, Janette Turner Hospital, Oyster, paperback edition, Virago Press, page 167

Verb

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

  1. (intransitive, transitive) To channel (a stream of water) through a culvert.
    • This led to a great deal of straightening and culverting, which in turn led to a massive loss of biodiversity.2020, Ben Aaronovitch, False Value, Gollancz, pages 234–235

culvert meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Urdu and Malayalam

culvert in Hindi

channel for draining water
पुलिया puliyā

culvert in Tamil

சிறுபாலம், மதகு, சிறு பாலம்

culvert in Urdu

بدرو, پٹی نالی

culvert in Malayalam

കലുങ്ക്, ഓവുപാലം, ചെറിയപാലം
More languagesFewer languages
culvert in Kannada
ಅಡಿಗಾಲುವೆ
culvert in Tagalog
alkantarilya
culvert in Vietnamese
cống

Examples of culvert in a sentence

  • The train runs slowly with frequent slacks for bridge and culvert repairs.
  • The Futsing Wolf Snake is a terrestrial species often hunting in forested areas or water culverts at higher elevations.
  • Second, his quarry was a culvert compared to those he’d visited along the Mississippi, sites he was sure Senator McBride had seen.

All 10 example sentences with culvert

Forms of culvert

Noun
pluralculverts
Verb
third-person singular presentculverts
present participleculverting
past participleculverted
pastculverted

Plural of culvert: culverts

Origin of culvert

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”).

Words formed from culvert

Questions about culvert

What does culvert mean?
Culvert means a channel crossing under a road or railway for the draining of water.
What is culvert in Hindi?
Culvert in Hindi is पुलिया (puliyā). See Culvert meaning in Hindi.
What part of speech is culvert?
Culvert can be a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce culvert?
Culvert is pronounced /ˈkʌlvə(ɹ)t/.
What is the plural of culvert?
The plural of culvert is culverts.

Words near culvert in the dictionary

  1. culverings
  2. culverins
  3. culverkey
  4. culverkeys
  5. culvers
  6. culvert
  7. culvertage
  8. culvertail
  9. culvertailed
  10. culvertails
  11. culverted

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: culvert (page history and authors); culvert (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); culvert (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); culvert (Malayalam Wiktionary) (page history and authors); culvert (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-culvert.wav.

Cite this entry: “culvert.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/culvert. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.