Moat
name, noun, verb ·Common ·High school level
Definitions
- 1 A deep, wide defensive ditch, normally filled with water, surrounding a fortified habitation.
- 2 ditch dug as a fortification and usually filled with water wordnet
- 3 An aspect of a business which makes it more "defensible" from competitors, because of the nature of its products, services or franchise or for some other reason. figuratively
"No matter how good your company's product is or how quickly the industry is growing, if there is no moat, competitors will invade your castle and burn it down."
- 4 A circular lowland between a resurgent dome and the walls of the caldera surrounding it.
- 5 A clear ring outside the eyewall of a tropical cyclone.
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- 6 A hill or mound. obsolete
- 1 To surround with a moat. transitive
- 1 A surname.
Example
More examples"Most castles have a moat surrounding them."
Etymology
From Middle English mote, from Old French mote (“mound, embankment”); compared also to Old French motte (“hillock, lump, clod, turf”), from Medieval Latin mota (“a mound, hill”), of Germanic origin, perhaps via Frankish *mot, *motta (“mud, peat, bog, turf”), from Proto-Germanic *mutô, *mudraz, *muþraz (“dirt, filth, mud, swamp”), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)mut- (“dark, dirty”). Cognate with Alemannic German Mott, Mutte (“peat, turf”), Bavarian Mott (“peat, turf”), dialectal Dutch mot (“dust, fine sand”), Saterland Frisian mut (“grit, litter, humus”), Swedish muta (“to drizzle”), Old English mot (“speck, particle”). More at mote, mud, smut. As term for a business strategy, popularized by American investor Warren Buffett.
From moat, a topographic surname for someone who lived near a moat.
Related phrases
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.