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fortification

UK/ˌfɔː(ɹ)tɪfɪˈkeɪʃən/US/ˌfɔː(ɹ)tɪfɪˈkeɪʃən/
nounC1Rare in speech; mostly a word you read · #13,916 of 15,258mostly written

Other forms: fortifications

A fortification is walls and works built to make a place defensible. Ancient fortifications, build fortifications, the town's fortifications.

It covers everything from a ditch to a star fort, and the word is usually plural. In food it means something else entirely: fortification is adding vitamins or minerals, as flour in Britain is fortified with iron.

John Scofield · CC BY-SA 4.0

Definitions of fortification

  1. 1nounfortificationWalls and works built to make a place defensible.C1

    “The town's old fortifications include a moat and thick stone walls.”

fortification is a defence.

Where it comes from

Latin fortificatio comes from fortis, strong, plus facere, to make.

  1. Proto-Indo-European

    *bʰerǵʰ-

  2. Latin

    fortificatio

  3. Middle French

    fortification

  4. English, today

    fortification

Middle French fortification, from Latin fortificatio, from fortifico, from Latin fortis. by surface analysis, fort + -ification.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Military & Defence

Practise this word

fortification in the wild

  • More than 80 countries use either mandatory or voluntary fortification of certain foods with folic acid as a measure to decrease the rate of NTDs.

    Folate

  • Fortification is usually divided into two branches: permanent fortification and field fortification.

    Fortification

  • Medieval-style fortifications were largely made obsolete by the arrival of cannons in the 14th century.

    Fortification

  • A bastion is a structure projecting outward from the curtain wall of a fortification, most commonly angular in shape and positioned at the corners of the fort.

    Bastion

  • As military architecture, the bastion is one element in the style of fortification dominant from the mid 16th to mid 19th centuries.

    Bastion

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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.