berm

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

• noun A narrow ledge or shelf, as along the top or bottom of a slope.
• noun Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, & West Virginia The shoulder of a road.
• noun A raised bank or path, especially the bank of a canal opposite the towpath.
• noun A nearly horizontal or landward-sloping portion of a beach, formed by the deposition of sediment by storm waves.
• noun A mound or bank of earth, used especially as a barrier or to provide insulation.
• noun The flat space between the edge of a ditch and the base of a fortification.
• transitive verb To provide with a berm or berms.

from The Century Dictionary.

• noun A narrow ledge; specifically, in fortification, a space of ground or a terrace from 3 to 5 feet in width, left between the rampart and the moat or foss, designed to receive the ruins of the rampart in the event of a bombardment, and to prevent the earth from filling the foss.
• noun The bank or side of a canal which is opposite to the towing-path. Also called berm-bank.
• noun In railroad engin., the narrow horizontal plane between the foot of the embankment or excavation slope and the top of the slope of the side-ditch.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

• noun (Fort.) A narrow shelf or path between the bottom of a parapet and the ditch.
• noun (Engineering) A ledge at the bottom of a bank or cutting, to catch earth that may roll down the slope, or to strengthen the bank.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

• noun A narrow ledge or shelf, as along the top or bottom of a slope
• noun A raised bank or path, especially the bank of a canal opposite the towpath
• noun A terrace formed by wave action along a beach
• noun A mound or bank of earth, used especially as a barrier or to provide insulation
• noun A ledge between the parapet and the moat in a fortification
• noun A strip of land between a street and sidewalk (regional)
• verb To provide something with a berm

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

• noun a narrow ledge or shelf typically at the top or bottom of a slope
• noun a narrow edge of land (usually unpaved) along the side of a road