TERMIUM Plus®

The Government of Canada’s terminology and linguistic data bank.

HA-HA WALL [1 record]

Record 1 1999-03-30

English

Subject field(s)
  • Fences and Enclosures
DEF

A retaining wall, fence, or hedge hidden from view in a ditch; often used to improve the view from a house or main building while keeping out livestock.

DEF

A barrier in the form of a trench, particularly one used in country houses built in the eighteenth and nineteenth century, to prevent livestock from crossing into the garden.

CONT

The use of the ha-ha, or sunken fence, to create and at the same time conceal the physical division between garden and contiguous park grounds (a division needed to keep grazing animals out of the garden) was a major step in the creation of the new, "natural" garden. Walpole explains the purpose of the visual unification: The contiguous ground of the park without the sunk fence was to be harmonized with the lawn within; and the garden in its turn was to be set free from its prime regularity, that it might assort with the wilder country without.

French

Domaine(s)
  • Enceintes et clôtures
DEF

Large fossé que l'on creuse souvent à la lisière d'un parc ou d'un jardin pour fermer le passage sans masquer la vue.

CONT

Kent imagina, pour prolonger la perspective et inclure tout un paysage dans un jardin, un nouveau genre de clôture, baptisé le "ha-ha", pour exprimer la surprise qu'il cause. C'était un fossé doublé d'une palissade en contre-bas et infranchissable, mais qui avait le mérite d'être invisible, et de ne pas rompre la continuité des lignes.

OBS

Pluriel : sauts-de-loup.

Spanish

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