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Ditch from WikiPedia:

A ditch is usually defined as a small to moderate depression created to channel water.

In Anglo-Saxon, the word dic already existed and was pronounced with a hard c in northern England and as ditch in the south. The origins of the word lie in digging a trench and forming the upcast soil into a bank alongside it. This practice has meant that the name dic was given to either the excavation or the bank, and evolved to both the words dike/dyke and ditch. Thus Offa's Dyke is a combined structure and Car Dyke is a trench, though it once had raised banks as well. In the midlands and north of England, and in the United States, a dike is what a ditch is in the south, a property boundary marker or small drainage channel. Where it carries a stream, it may be called a running dike as in Rippingale Running Dike, which leads water from the catchwater drain, Car Dyke, to the South Forty Foot Drain in Lincolnshire (TF1427). The Weir Dike is a soak dike in Bourne North Fen, near Twenty and alongside the River Glen.

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