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bailey

UK/ˈbeɪli/US/ˈbeɪli/
nounC2Very rare — outside the 30,000 commonest English words, so you will meet it in writing rather than in speechneutral

Other forms: baileys

A bailey is the open courtyard inside a castle wall. The outer bailey, cross the bailey, the bailey gate.

The motte and bailey castle is the standard Norman design, a mound with a tower and a walled yard below. The Old Bailey in London is named from the street that ran along the old city wall.

Definitions of bailey

  1. 1nounbaileyThe open courtyard inside a castle wall.C2

    “The villagers sheltered with their animals in the castle's bailey during the attack.”

bailey is a courtyard.

Where it comes from

Old French baile means a palisade or enclosure, from Latin baculum, a stick.

  1. Latin

    bacula

  2. Old French

    baile — palisade, enclosure

  3. English, today

    bailey

Built from

  • baculum · Latin — stick, rod

From Old French baile (“palisade, enclosure”), from Latin bacula, plural of baculum (“stick, rod”).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in A Song of Ice and Fire

Practise this word

bailey in the wild

  • The street outside follows the route of the ancient wall around London, which was part of the fortification's bailey; this likely gave it its name.

    Old Bailey

  • Motte-and-bailey castles were adopted in Scotland, Ireland, and Denmark in the 12th and 13th centuries.

    Motte-and-bailey castle

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.