jetty

• IPA^(key): /ˈd͡ʒɛti/

• Audio (Southern England)

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  Rhymes: -ɛti

From French jetée (“pier, jetty, causeway”), from jeter. Compare jet, jutty.

jetty (plural jetties)

1. A structure of wood or stone extended into the sea to influence the current or tide, or to protect a harbor or beach.

   Synonyms: breakwater, mole

   • 1769, [Edmund Burke], Observations on a Late State of the Nation, London: […] J[ames] Dodsley, […], →OCLC, page 86:

     [I]nſtead of demolition, they found conſtruction; for the French vvere then at vvork on the repair of the jettees. On the remonſtrances of General [Henry Seymour] Convvay, ſome parts of theſe jettees were immediately deſtroyed.

2. A dock or wharf extending from the shore; a pier.
3. (architecture) A part of a building that jets or projects beyond the rest, and overhangs the wall below.

• jettee (obsolete)

• (pier): wharf, dock

• (pier): quay, levee

jetty (third-person singular simple present jetties, present participle jettying, simple past and past participle jettied)

1. (obsolete, intransitive) To jut out; to project.
   • 1598, John Florio, A Worlde of Wordes, or Dictionarie of the Italian and English tongues:

     ADENTELLARE […] It is properly to jetty out, or indent stones or timber of any unfinished building, that another may the easier be joyned unto, or that finished.

jet +‎ -y

jetty (comparative jettier, superlative jettiest)

1. (archaic) Made of jet, or like jet in color.
   • c. 1587–1588, [Christopher Marlowe], Tamburlaine the Great. […] The First Part […], 2nd edition, part 1, London: […] [R. Robinson for] Richard Iones, […], published 1592, →OCLC; reprinted as Tamburlaine the Great (A Scolar Press Facsimile), Menston, Yorkshire, London: Scolar Press, 1973, →ISBN, Act IIII, scene i:

     Blacke are his colloures, blacke Pauillion,
     His ſpeare, his ſhield, his horſe, his armour, plumes,
     And Ietty Feathers menace death and hell,
     UUithout reſpect of ſex, degree or age.

   • 1819, Lord Byron, Don Juan, III.75:

     those large black eyes were so blackly fringed, / The glossy rebels mocked the jetty stain [...].

   • 1847 January – 1848 July, William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair […], London: Bradbury and Evans […], published 1848, →OCLC:

     But there was only Glorvina of the jetty ringlets with whom his intercourse was familiar, and this dashing young woman was not bent upon loving the Major, but rather on making the Major admire her […]

   • 1885, Sir Richard Burton, The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, volume 1:

     She raised her face veil […] showing two black eyes fringed with jetty lashes, whose glances were soft and languishing and whose perfect beauty was ever blandishing […]

• jettiness

• “jetty”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.
• “jetty”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.