citadel

UK/ˈsɪtədəl/US/ˈsɪtədəl/

nounB2+Occasional — familiar, but not everyday · #10,858 of 15,258leans written

Other forms: citadels

A citadel is the strongest fort guarding a city. The old citadel, retreat to the citadel, storm the citadel.

It served two purposes and everybody knew it: defending the city from outside and controlling it from within, since the guns pointed both ways. Figuratively a citadel is any stronghold of a belief, as in a citadel of privilege.

Definitions of citadel

1nouncitadelThe strongest fort guarding a city.B2+
“The soldiers retreated to the citadel on the hill when the city walls fell.”

citadel is a fort.

Where it comes from

Italian cittadella is a diminutive of citta, a city, from Latin civitas.

Latin
cīvitās
Italian
cittadella
French
citadelle
English, today
citadel

Built from

città · Italian — city

From French citadelle, from Italian cittadella, diminutive of città (“city”), from Latin cīvitās.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practise this word

citadel in the wild

A citadel is the most fortified area of a town or city.
Citadel
The entire building was a large fortress containing the citadel, but because the citadel dominates the ruins, the entire fortress is now named Bam Citadel.
Arg-e Bam
A few days after the earthquake, the President of Iran, Mohammad Khatami, announced that the citadel would be rebuilt.
Arg-e Bam
The Tower of David, also known as the Citadel, is an ancient citadel and contemporary museum, located near the Jaffa Gate entrance to the Old City of Jerusalem.
Tower of David
The citadel that stands today dates to the Mamluk and Ottoman periods.
Tower of David

1 / 2

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 cīvitās family

citizen

citadel — used about once every 7,462 pages · #10,858 · point at the bar for the others

← Vocabulary