I an reading a story which takes place in west Texas. The author routinely refers to the excavation on either side of a county road as a "barditch". I can't find the word in any on-line or hard copy dictionary. Does anyone know the origin of the word and why people from Texas might use it? Does anyone else use this word in place of simple old "ditch"?

Why do people from Texas (particular West Texas) do anything? Welcome to the madhouse.

This site has some information about Barditch. Dunno if it's relevant:

http://www.lincsheritage.org/vt/boston/economy.html

That's the old Boston, not the new Boston.

bar ditch is Western alteration of 'borrow ditch', which NI3 defines as "a ditch dug along a roadway to furnish fill and provide drainage" -- none of which 'splains nothin'.

except that the roadfill is borrowed from the ditch, I suppose. hmmm. roadfill. seems like there's a rhyme there somewhere...

"a ditch dug along a roadway to furnish fill and provide drainage"
Why else would you dig a ditch?

Why else would you dig a ditch?

To keep them varmint auto-mobiles from rekin' my fence an lettin' loose all muh herd!

"..the roadfill is borrowed from the ditch, I suppose.." Exactly! Also along a stream prone to flooding they may have a 'barpit' from which they borrow material for a berm, levee or dike.

Here's a picture:

http://www.villr.com/properties.htm

The term actually goes back to Elizabethan England and has to do with the curiosity of the populace about Shakespeare's mysterious rash. Everyone was going around asking, "I wonder what makes the Bard itch."

TEd The only appropriate answer would be a Ha-ha.

I thought bowditch was Anglish for bolgia as in the ditches that the 9th circle of hell is divided into:

Noi passamm'oltre, e io e 'l duca mio,
su per lo scoglio infino in su l'altr'arco
che cuopre 'l fosso in che si paga il fio
a quei che scommettendo acquistan carco.
[Inferno. XXVII, 133ff.]

We onward went,
I and my leader, up along the rock,
Far as another arch, that overhangs
The foss, wherein the penalty is paid
Of those who load them with committed sin.
http://www.bartleby.com/20/127.html

We traveled on ahead, my guide and I,
Along the ridge as far as the next bridgeway
Arching the ditch where they must pay the price
Who earned such loads by sowing constant discord.
http://www.italianstudies.org/comedy/Inferno27.htm

"I wonder what makes the Bard itch."

Somebody let TEd out AGAIN!

He was allergic to hedges?

(from Flaubert's Mme. Bovary):

She went out. The walls trembled, the ceiling was crushing her, and she passed back through the long alley, stumbling against the heaps of dead leaves scattered by the wind. At last she reached the ha-ha hedge in front of the gate; she broke her nails against the lock in her haste to open it. Then a hundred steps farther on, breathless, almost falling, she stopped. And now turning round, she once more saw the impassive chateau, with the park, the gardens, the three courts, and all the windows of the façade....