debouch

From French déboucher (de + bouche (“mouth”)), modelled on Italian sboccare.

• IPA^(key): /dɪˈbuːʃ/, /dɪˈbaʊt͡ʃ/

debouch (plural debouches)

1. (geography) A narrow outlet from which a body of water pours.
   • 1888 May 26, Phillip Carroll, “Sulphur Mines in Sicily”, in Scientific American Supplement‎, number 647:

     In level portions of the country vertical shafts are preferred, but where the mine is situated upon a hill a debouch may often be found below the sulphur seam, ...

2. (military) A fortress at the end of a defile.
   • 1887, George B. McClellan, McClellan's Own Story:

     To prevent another demonstration of this character, and to insure a debouch on the south bank of the James, it became necessary to occupy Coggin's Point, which was done on the 3d, and the enemy driven back towards Petersburg.

debouch (third-person singular simple present debouches, present participle debouching, simple past and past participle debouched)

1. (intransitive) To pour forth from a narrow opening; to emerge from a narrow place like a defile into open country or a wider space.
   • 1985, Anthony Burgess, Kingdom of the Wicked:

     The pretty pimpled young man, no longer a boy, came down from the imperial box in his purple to the performers’ well which debouched into the arena.

   • 1993, Will Self, My Idea of Fun:

     Ungrateful brats debouch from their cheap holiday in someone else’s misery and their tired parents try desperately to summon up joy out of indifference.

   • 1997, Thomas Pynchon, Mason & Dixon:

     The water rushes away in uncommonly long waterfalls, downward for hours, unbrak’d, till at last debouching into an interior Lake of great size.

• bouched