embrasure
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English
[edit]![](http://178.128.105.246/content-http-upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8c/Flodden_Wall_gunloops.jpg/220px-Flodden_Wall_gunloops.jpg)
Etymology
[edit]From Middle French embrasure.
Pronunciation
[edit]- IPA(key): /ɪmˈbɹeɪʒə(ɹ)/
Audio (Southern England): (file)
Noun
[edit]embrasure (plural embrasures)
- (architecture, military) Any of the indentations between the merlons of a battlement; an opening in a wall or parapet through which ordnance can be fired.
- 1938 April, George Orwell [pseudonym; Eric Arthur Blair], chapter VI, in Homage to Catalonia, London: Secker & Warburg, →OCLC:
- But there were less casualties than might have been expected, and the barricade rose steadily, a wall of concrete two feet thick, with embrasures for two machine-guns and a small field gun.
- (figurative) Any small protected space.
- The slanting indentation in a wall for a door or window, such that the space is larger on the inside than the outside.
- 1916, James Joyce, chapter 3, in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man[1]:
- When the fit had spent itself he walked weakly to the window and, lifting the sash, sat in a corner of the embrasure and leaned his elbow upon the sill.
- 2009, Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall, Fourth Estate, published 2010, page 155:
- Now he stands in a window embrasure, Liz's prayer book in hand.
- (obsolete) An embrace.
- c. 1602, William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Troylus and Cressida”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act IV, scene iv]:
- And suddenly; where injury of chance / Puts back leave-taking, justles roughly by / All time of pause, rudely beguiles our lips / Of all rejoindure, forcibly prevents / Our lock'd embrasures, strangles our dear vows / Even in the birth of our own labouring breath:
Translations
[edit]Any of the indentations between the merlons of a battlement
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Further reading
[edit]French
[edit]Etymology
[edit]Noun
[edit]embrasure f (plural embrasures)
Descendants
[edit]Further reading
[edit]- “embrasure”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.
Categories:
- English terms borrowed from Middle French
- English terms derived from Middle French
- English 3-syllable words
- English terms with IPA pronunciation
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- English lemmas
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- English countable nouns
- en:Architectural elements
- en:Military
- English terms with quotations
- English terms with obsolete senses
- French terms suffixed with -ure
- French lemmas
- French nouns
- French countable nouns
- French feminine nouns
- fr:Architectural elements