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battlements

nounC1Occasional — familiar, but not everyday · #11,258 of 15,258neutral

Battlements are the notched wall along the top of a castle. Walk the battlements, from the battlements, ruined battlements.

The gaps are the point: a defender stands behind the solid part and shoots through the gap, then steps back. The word is nearly always plural, and the pattern later became decoration on buildings never meant to be defended.

The original uploader was Tianxiaozhang at Chinese Wikipedia. · CC BY-SA 3.0

Definitions of battlements

  1. 1nounbattlementsThe notched wall along the top of a castle.C1

    “Soldiers stood on the battlements of the castle, watching the enemy approach.”

battlements is a wall.

Also accepted in games: battlement

Where it comes from

  1. Old French

    bataillement

  2. Middle English

    batilment

  3. English

    battlement

  4. English, today

    battlements

Built from

  • bastillement · Old French — fortification
  • bastillier · Old French — to fortify, to equip with battlements
  • bastille · Old French — fortress

battlement comes from Middle English batilment, from Old French bataillement, earlier bastillement (“fortification”), from bastillier (“to fortify, to equip with battlements”), from bastille (“fortress”) (see bastion). by surface analysis, battle + -ment.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in A Song of Ice and Fire

Practise this word

battlements in the wild

  • From the later Middle Ages onwards, battlements also became a widely used decorative motif on churches, secular buildings, and architectural details with no defensive function.

    Battlement

  • Pre-Mughal features included the curved cornices and battlements, corner octagonal turrets, and arches on the southern, northern, and eastern sides.

    Binat Bibi Mosque

  • The two-storey building is in a Tudor style, with battlements and several turrets.

    Queen's Tower, Sheffield

  • Striking are the twelve 1.5 meter high dovetail battlements that crown the keep and were brought into this form only recently.

    Burg Bideneck

  • The Venetians built on the ancient battlements and added on and repaired it during both periods that they occupied the castle.

    Methoni Castle

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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.

Related words

the bastille family

battlementsbastionbattlement

battlements — used about once every 8,568 pages · #11,258 · point at the bar for the others