Mole (architecture)

Not to be confused with Seawall or Breakwater (structure).
This article is about a type of coastal structure. For the building in Turin, see Mole Antonelliana. For other uses, see Mole (disambiguation).
A mole at Bastia in Corsica

A mole is a massive structure, usually of stone, used as a pier, breakwater, or a causeway separating two bodies of water. A mole may have a wooden structure built on top of it that resembles a wooden pier. The defining feature of a mole, however, is that water cannot freely flow underneath it, unlike a true pier. The oldest known mole is at Wadi al-Jarf, an ancient Egyptian harbor complex on the Red Sea, constructed ca. 2500 BCE.

The word comes from Middle French mole, ultimately from Latin mōlēs, meaning a large mass, especially of rock; it has the same root as molecule and mole, the chemical unit of measurement.[1]

  1. ^ John Simpson (ed), "mole, n.2", Oxford English Dictionary Online, retrieved 8 January 2011.