Dike (redirected from diker)

Dike, in Greek religion and mythology

Dike: see Horae.

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dike, in technology

dike, in technology: see levee.

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dike

Bank, usually of earth, constructed to control or confine water. Dikes were purely defensive at first but later became a means to acquire polders (tracts of land reclaimed from a body of water through the construction of offshore dikes roughly parallel to the shoreline). After a dike is built, the polder is drained by pumping out the water. Where the land surface is above low-tide level, tide gates discharge water into the sea at low tide and automatically close to prevent reentry of seawater at high tide. To reclaim lands that are below low-tide level, the water must be pumped over the dikes. The most notable example of polder construction is the system adjacent to Holland's IJsselmeer (Zuider Zee) barrier dam. If The Netherlands were to lose the protection of its dikes, its most densely populated portion would be inundated by the sea and rivers.

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dyke, dike

1. an embankment constructed to prevent flooding, keep out the sea, etc.

2. a ditch or watercourse

3. a bank made of earth excavated for and placed alongside a ditch

4. Scot a wall, esp a dry-stone wall

5. a vertical or near-vertical wall-like body of igneous rock intruded into cracks in older rock

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dike [dīk]

(civil engineering)

An embankment constructed on dry ground along a riverbank to prevent overflow of lowlands and to retain floodwater.

(geology)

A tabular body of igneous rock that cuts across adjacent rocks or cuts massive rocks.

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dike, dyke

1. A dry stone wall.

2. A long low dam.

3. A bank of earth from an excavation.

4. An earth embankment which acts as a coffer-dam for keeping water out of an excavation.

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Dike

one of Horae; personification of natural law and justice. [Gk. Myth.: Zimmerman, 85]

See : Justice

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dike - To remove or disable a portion of something, as a wire from a computer or a subroutine from a program. A standard slogan is "When in doubt, dike it out". (The implication is that it is usually more effective to attack software problems by reducing complexity than by increasing it.) The word "dikes" is widely used among mechanics and engineers to mean "diagonal cutters", especially the heavy-duty metal-cutting version, but may also refer to a kind of wire-cutters used by electronics technicians. To "dike something out" means to use such cutters to remove something. Indeed, the TMRC Dictionary defined dike as "to attack with dikes". Among hackers this term has been metaphorically extended to informational objects such as sections of code.

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Dike

a hydroengineering installation, analogous in structure to an earth dam.

A distinction is made between pressure and nonpressure dikes. Pressure dikes are installed to protect river and maritime coastal lowlands from flooding, as canal embankments (protective dikes), and for joining together pressure hydroengineering complexes with banks (conjunction dikes). Nonpressure dikes are erected for guiding a current flow for the purpose of regulating and straightening out river beds and for improving the conditions of navigation and operation of water-passage and water-collecting hydroengineering installations (hydroelectric power plants, water-spillway dams, bridge openings, pumping stations, and so on). Nonpressure dikes may be nonsubmersible or submersible; depending on the position of the dike in relation to the direction of the current, dikes are called longitudinal or transverse. Dikes are usually constructed of materials found in the immediate area (for the most part, rock waste); small dikes are made of earth, brush, stacked fascines, and so on.

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Dike

an intrusive magmatic body that is bounded by parallel planes and that cuts the rocks that contain the dike. Dikes often consist of rock that is harder than the surrounding rock, and for this reason erosion causes them to protrude in the form of walls. Dikes accompany the formation of effusive and intrusive rock or form independent belts joined by magmatic hearths at great depths. A distinction is also made between radiating dikes, which spread from a common center, and ring dikes. Sometimes dikes are an indication of the presence of minerals (gold or polymetals, for instance).