How to Use earthwork in a Sentence

earthwork

noun
  • Trees and brush grew on its outer earthworks, which came to look more like hills than defensive features.
    — Erin L. Thompson, Smithsonian Magazine, 10 Apr. 2023
  • While his grandfather was plowing one day, his horse fell through the ground and into an ancient earthwork.
    — David Hammond, chicagotribune.com, 21 July 2017
  • The earthwork should be strong enough to hold back 1 million acre-feet of water, Gatzka said.
    — Jessica Garrison, Los Angeles Times, 24 Apr. 2023
  • The eight sites making up the earthworks are spread across 90 miles of what is present-day southern Ohio.
    — Julie Carr Smyth, BostonGlobe.com, 19 Sep. 2023
  • Instead, these earthworks were likely places of gathering for people to feast and trade.
    — Jason Daley, Smithsonian, 23 June 2017
  • At this point, about 60 acres have been cleared and major earthwork has already been completed.
    — Paul Brinkmann, OrlandoSentinel.com, 20 July 2017
  • As the city began its industrial rise, some earthworks were razed, and factories were built over them.
    — Kevin Williams, Smithsonian Magazine, 9 May 2025
  • The earthwork will be promoted along with the city’s annual summer art program.
    — Lisa Gutierrez, Kansas City Star, 23 Apr. 2026
  • All of the demolition and earthwork is complete, and the structure of the new stand is already being put into place.
    — Shaun Goodwin, Idaho Statesman, 18 Apr. 2025
  • Snipers, missileers and artillerymen on both sides wait for, and take potshots at, the enemy on the opposite earthwork.
    — David Axe, Forbes, 6 Dec. 2021
  • It's thought that people would have celebrated the solstice at the site around the same time as the very first earthworks were built at Stonehenge.
    — Adam England, PEOPLE, 18 June 2026
  • Inside the great earthwork the builders reared a circle of towering timber posts from oak trees, some six feet thick and weighing more than 17 tons.
    — National Geographic, 19 July 2022
  • In the sixties and seventies, the earthworks movement used dirt and stone to produce art that could be beautiful and unsettling.
    — Zach Helfand, The New Yorker, 14 Aug. 2023
  • This is around the same time that the first earthworks at Stonehenge were built, while the famous stones weren’t put in place until 500 years later.
    — Jack Guy, CNN Money, 18 June 2026
  • Join a park naturalist for an hour-long hike to learn about the Adena and Hopewell cultures who constructed the earthworks.
    — Karl Schneider, The Indianapolis Star, 13 June 2024
  • In Khiam, about 5 kilometers north of the border, swathes of green have turned brown after Israeli earthwork.
    — Zeena Saifi, CNN Money, 24 Apr. 2026
  • In back, the gentle rises in the lawn are actually part of a Maya Lin earthwork, Lay of the Land.
    — Ted Loos, WSJ, 24 May 2018
  • The permits also cover earthwork on vacant land next door owned by RD Management.
    — Frederick Melo, Twin Cities, 14 June 2017
  • In the 1970s, Smithson began making earthworks, the art pieces that would define his career.
    — Sonja Anderson, Smithsonian Magazine, 19 Dec. 2024
  • Currently, the earthwork is nearly gone and sits beneath a cemetery, per the Washington Post.
    — Elizabeth Gamillo, Smithsonian Magazine, 7 Feb. 2022
  • Named for a sci-fi novel that Smithson read in 1967, earthworks represented a new genre of landscape art.
    — Phyllis Tuchman, New York Times, 27 Jan. 2017
  • As the seat of the Kingdom of Benin, the city was renowned for monumental earthworks and extraordinary bronze artistry.
    — Amir Daftari, MSNBC Newsweek, 7 Dec. 2025
  • Once the wall was completed, the engineers joined up the canals and turned them into a moat on the wall’s defensive side, an enormous earthwork that is still visible today.
    — Paul Cooper, Discover Magazine, 27 July 2018
  • The Alaska Labors Training School offered to do the earthwork and concrete foundation for the boards.
    — Anchorage Daily News, 22 Mar. 2021
  • The black-and-white photograph of the blast, with earthworks catapulted skyward, looks like a scene from the Great War in Europe.
    — Susan Scott Parrish, Smithsonian, 11 Apr. 2017
  • The suit was meant to ensure greater public access to these earthworks, which have historically been off limits to those who aren’t members of Moundbuilders for much of the year.
    — Alex Greenberger, ARTnews.com, 2 Aug. 2024
  • Artillery and machine guns made infantry in the open vulnerable in WW1, and earthworks were needed for survival.
    — David Hambling, Forbes, 11 Sep. 2024
  • Yet Dia remains very much the keeper of the Minimal-Conceptual-earthwork flame.
    — Roberta Smith, New York Times, 15 Apr. 2021
  • The jetty is a 1,500-foot earthwork coil of basalt rock and mud that sprawls into the mirror-like expanse of the Great Salt Lake.
    — Matt Ortile, Condé Nast Traveler, 4 Sep. 2024
  • The rounded earthwork, which may be part of the largest pre-Hispanic settlement north of Mexico, appears to be what’s known as a council circle.
    — Theresa MacHemer, Smithsonian Magazine, 16 Sep. 2020

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'earthwork.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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