What's the difference between gabion and knickknack?

Gabion


Definition:

  • (n.) A hollow cylinder of wickerwork, like a basket without a bottom. Gabions are made of various sizes, and filled with earth in building fieldworks to shelter men from an enemy's fire.
  • (n.) An openwork frame, as of poles, filled with stones and sunk, to assist in forming a bar dyke, etc., as in harbor improvement.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Heselden, a former miner, used his redundancy money to make a fortune from manufacturing gabions, portable metal cages filled with sand or soil for blast protection at military bases and flood defence.
  • (2) "He protected the armies and peace-keeping forces of the world with his greatest invention, the Bastion Concertainer," said Chris Robinson, senior manager of the Hesco company whose modernised version of Roman defensive gabions - baskets filled with stones and crammed together to create makeshift walls - are used everywhere from Afghanistan to the flood levees of New Orleans.
  • (3) Updating the medieval defence system of gabions - baskets filled with stones and crammed together to create makeshift walls - he patented the Bastion, which proved an immediate bestseller for his Hesco firm.
  • (4) In front of each house are gabion walls, gabion being the form of construction used in road embankments, where loose stones are placed in wire cages.
  • (5) He invented a new version of the medieval gabion – baskets filled with stone or rubble which have been adapted in modern times to line riverbanks and road cuttings.
  • (6) Like the building, the car park is raised up on a defensive berm, surrounded by gabion walls and hedgerows, reinforcing the feeling that this alien spaceship is cut off from the surrounding streets.

Knickknack


Definition:

  • (n.) A trifle or toy; a bawble; a gewgaw.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) It is a theatrically cluttered space full of her varied knickknacks, including cushions embroidered with images of her beloved dogs , a DVD of a BBC docudrama on Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor and, quizzically, a book titled The Married Kama Sutra.

Words possibly related to "gabion"

Words possibly related to "knickknack"