cofferdam.
A temporary watertight enclosure used to create a dry foundation for building bridges and other structures over water.
Meaning & usage
A temporary watertight enclosure used to create a dry foundation for building bridges and other structures over water.
An empty space that acts as a protective barrier between two floors or bulkheads on a ship.
Synonym of dental dam (“barrier to keep the teeth dry during dental work”) (dental sense).
Where this word comes from
From coffer + dam. The dental dam sense was introduced in English by dentist Sanford Christie Barnum at New York City in 1864 (by metaphor), but after his century it was maintained only in languages other than English (for example, German Kofferdam as a loanword from 19th-century English).
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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.
Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.