Free TranslationFree Translation
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Barbacan   Listen
noun
Barbacan, Barbican  n.  
1.
(Fort.) A tower or advanced work defending the entrance to a castle or city, as at a gate or bridge. It was often large and strong, having a ditch and drawbridge of its own.
2.
An opening in the wall of a fortress, through which missiles were discharged upon an enemy.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Barbacan" Quotes from Famous Books



... birch canoes they have run cloud-high, On the crest of a nor'land storm; They have soaked the sea, and have braved the sky, And laughed at the Conqueror Worm. They reck not beast and they fear no man, They have trailed where the panther glides; On the edge of a mountain barbican, They have tracked where the reindeer hides— And these are for thee, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... an exterior fortification of no great height or strength, intended to protect the postern-gate, through which Cedric had been recently dismissed by Front-de-Boeuf. The castle moat divided this species of barbican [Footnote: A barbican is a tower or outwork built to defend the entry to a castle or fortification.] from the rest of the fortress, so that, in case of its being taken, it was easy to cut off the communication with the main building, ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester

... with his neighbors, had made considerable additions to the strength of his castle by building towers upon the outward wall, so as to flank it at every angle. The access, as usual in castles of the period, lay through an arched [v]barbican or outwork, which was defended by ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various

... the king fast in the giant's arms they came and loosed him. And then the king commanded Sir Kay to smite off the giant's head, and to set it upon a truncheon of a spear, and bear it to Sir Howell, and tell him that his enemy was slain; and after let this head be bound to a barbican that all the people may see and behold it; and go ye two up to the mountain, and fetch me my shield, my sword, and the club of iron; and as for the treasure, take ye it, for ye shall find there goods out of number; so I have the kirtle and the club I desire no more. This was the fiercest ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume I (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory

... Ford, and continuing until 1772, when the firm name was changed to William Green & Co. In 1809 it became J. & J. Arnold, who were succeeded in 1814 by Pichard and John Arnold, the firm name by which it is known at the present day. This last named concern located at 59 Barbican, on the site of the old City Hall in London, and later moved to their present address, No. 155 Aldersgate street. The inks made by the "fathers" of the firm were "gall" inks WITHOUT "added" color. At the commencement of the nineteenth century we ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho

... good-temper seemed to gild the streets. He took the boys up to the Hoe and pointed out the war-ships; he whisked them into the Camera Obscura; thence to the Citadel, where they watched a squad of recruits at drill; thence to the Barbican, where the trawling-fleet lay packed like herring, and the shops were full of rope and oilskin suits and marine instruments, and dirty children rolled about the roadway between the legs of seabooted fishermen; and so up to the town ...
— The Ship of Stars • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... large house in Barbican, for the reception of scholars; but the numerous relations of his wife, to whom he generously granted refuge for awhile, occupied his rooms. In time, however, they went away; "and the house again," says Philips, "now looked like a house of the muses ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson

... Joe, surnamed Ridley, was born in the neighbourhood of the Barbican. He remembers how murderers and highwaymen used to come and hide in the court where he was born, "because, don't you see, the police daren't come where we was living." He went to a school in Charterhouse-square. ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie

... red-tiled turrets, whose gaudy appearance had last night made Philip regard the whole as a flimsy, Frenchchified erection, but he now saw it to be of extremely solid stone and lime, and with no entrance but the great barbican gateway they had entered by; moreover, with a yawning dry moat all round. Wherever he looked he saw these tall, pointed red caps, resembling, he thought, those worn by the victims of an auto-de-fe, as one of Walsingham's ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge

... thick, and defying the lashings of the waves, almost as though it were some Pharos or other guide to mariners. It was surrounded by a low stone wall of prodigious weight of masonry, and was approached from the mainland by a drawbridge and barbican. But for many months of the year there was no mainland within half a mile of it, and the King's Castle could only be reached by boats. Men said that the Sun never shone there but for ten minutes before and ten minutes after a storm, and there were almost always storms lowering over ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala



Words linked to "Barbacan" :   barbican, tower



Copyright © 2024 e-Free Translation.com