Levee or levée comes from the French verb lever, meaning "getting up" or "rising". It has two main meanings:
- Levée (ceremony), formal ceremonial "risings" of a monarch from his bed each morning to meet with privileged people in relative privacy, which evolved into several different forms of state ceremonies in various countries
- Levee, a "rising" on a river bank, either one formed naturally by the periodic flooding of rivers or a man-made barrier created to control floods