Word.ws English Dictionary

cunette

Syllables: cu·nette/kjuːˈnɛt/US/kjuːˈnɛt/

cunette noun: a trench dug in a moat to allow for drainage, or as an extra obstacle for attackers.

cunette: a trench dug in a moat to allow for drainage, or as an extra obstacle for attackers
Image: This picture belongs to Xavier Caré . Please credit, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

cunette (plural cunettes)

  1. A trench dug in a moat to allow for drainage, or as an extra obstacle for attackers.
    • Ford's Ravelin.—Completed in its ditch, ſluices, cunette, aqueducts, ſcarp, and counterſcarp walls; […]1773, “Progress and State of the Works beyond the Great Ditch”, in Further Report (being the Eighth) from the Committee of Secrecy Appointed by the House of Commons, Assembled in Westminster in the...
    • Nor was anything done at San Pablo except the cutting of two cunettes necessary for working with heavy machinery, and the projection of a plane for a passage under the Panama Railway, by which the excavations made at K. 35.700 could be carried to the banks of the Chagres.1889, Charles Rogers, Intelligence Report of the Panama Canal (50th Congress, 1st session, 1887–1888; House; Miscellaneous Document), Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office...

Forms of cunette

pluralcunettes

Origin of cunette

From French cunette (possibly also lacunette), from Italian cunetta (“cunette”), said to be from lacunetta, diminutive of lacuna (“ditch; lagoon; gap”), from Latin lacūna (“hole, pit; cavity, cleft, hollow, opening; gap, void”), from lacus (“lake”), from Proto-Indo-European *lókus (“lake, pool”).

Words that rhyme with cunette

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about cunette

What does cunette mean?
Cunette means a trench dug in a moat to allow for drainage, or as an extra obstacle for attackers.
What part of speech is cunette?
Cunette is a noun.
How do you pronounce cunette?
Cunette is pronounced /kjuːˈnɛt/ (UK).
What is the plural of cunette?
The plural of cunette is cunettes.

Words near cunette in the dictionary

  1. cuneocuboid
  2. cuneometatarsal
  3. cuneometatarsale
  4. cuneonavicular
  5. Cuneos
  6. cunette
  7. cunettes
  8. cuneus
  9. Cung
  10. cungevoi
  11. Cungrea

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: cunette (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.

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

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