LEVEE

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does levee mean? 

• LEVEE (noun)
  The noun LEVEE has 3 senses:

1. a formal reception of visitors or guests (as at a royal court)

2. a pier that provides a landing place on a river

3. an embankment that is built in order to prevent a river from overflowing

  Familiarity information: LEVEE used as a noun is uncommon.

 Dictionary entry details 

• LEVEE (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A formal reception of visitors or guests (as at a royal court)

Classified under:

Nouns denoting groupings of people or objects

Hypernyms ("levee" is a kind of...):

reception (a formal party of people; as after a wedding)

Sense 2

Meaning:

A pier that provides a landing place on a river

Classified under:

Nouns denoting man-made objects

Hypernyms ("levee" is a kind of...):

dock; pier; wharf; wharfage (a platform built out from the shore into the water and supported by piles; provides access to ships and boats)

Sense 3

Meaning:

An embankment that is built in order to prevent a river from overflowing

Classified under:

Nouns denoting man-made objects

Hypernyms ("levee" is a kind of...):

embankment (a long artificial mound of stone or earth; built to hold back water or to support a road or as protection)

 Context examples 

Flooding can also happen when a river or stream overflows its bank, when a levee is breached, or when a dam breaks.

(Floods, Federal Emergency Management Agency)

I used to attend the king’s levee once or twice a week, and had often seen him under the barber’s hand, which indeed was at first very terrible to behold; for the razor was almost twice as long as an ordinary scythe.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

I desired you would let me know, by a letter, when party and faction were extinguished; judges learned and upright; pleaders honest and modest, with some tincture of common sense, and Smithfield blazing with pyramids of law books; the young nobility’s education entirely changed; the physicians banished; the female Yahoos abounding in virtue, honour, truth, and good sense; courts and levees of great ministers thoroughly weeded and swept; wit, merit, and learning rewarded; all disgracers of the press in prose and verse condemned to eat nothing but their own cotton, and quench their thirst with their own ink.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

Again: because it is a general complaint, that the favourites of princes are troubled with short and weak memories; the same doctor proposed, that whoever attended a first minister, after having told his business, with the utmost brevity and in the plainest words, should, at his departure, give the said minister a tweak by the nose, or a kick in the belly, or tread on his corns, or lug him thrice by both ears, or run a pin into his breech; or pinch his arm black and blue, to prevent forgetfulness; and at every levee day, repeat the same operation, till the business were done, or absolutely refused.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)