barbican

See also: Barbican

English

Alternative forms

• barbacan

Etymology

From Old French barbacane, of uncertain origin: compare Arabic بَرْبَخ (barbaḵ, “aqueduct, sewer”), and Persian باب‌خانه (bâb-xâne, “gatehouse”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈbɑː(ɹ)bɪkən/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

Noun

barbican (plural barbicans)

1. A tower at the entrance to a castle or fortified town.
   • 1958, T[erence] H[anbury] White, chapter V, in The Once and Future King, New York, N.Y.: G. P. Putnam's Sons, →ISBN, book I (The Sword in the Stone):

     The stone part of the drawbridge with its barbican and the bartizans of the gatehouse are in good repair. […] There was a large hidden trapdoor in the floor of the barbican, which would let them into the moat after all.

2. A fortress at the end of a bridge.
3. An opening in the wall of a fortress through which the guns are levelled; a narrow loophole through which arrows and other missiles may be shot.
   • 1922 February, James Joyce, “[Episode 11]”, in Ulysses, Paris: Shakespeare and Company, […], →OCLC:

     Two shafts of soft daylight fell across the flagged floor from the high barbacans.

4. A temporary wooden tower built for defensive purposes.

Synonyms

• (entryway fortification): see guardhouse

Derived terms

• barbicanage
• barbicaned

 

Translations

A tower at the entrance to a castle or fortified town

• Basque: barbakana
• Bulgarian: барбакан m (barbakan)
• Catalan: barbacana (ca) f
• Czech: barbakán m
• Dutch: barbacane f
• Esperanto: barbakano
• Estonian: barbakaan
• French: barbacane (fr) f
• Galician: barbacá (gl) f
• German: Barbakane f
• Hungarian: barbakán (hu)
• Italian: barbacane (it) m
• Latvian: barbakāns m
• Lithuanian: barbakanas m
• Occitan: barbacana (oc)
• Old Portuguese: barvacãa f
• Polish: barbakan (pl) m, rondel (pl) m
• Portuguese: barbacã (pt) f
• Romanian: barbacană (ro) f
• Russian: барбака́н (ru) m (barbakán), стре́льница f (strélʹnica)
• Serbo-Croatian:

  Cyrillic: барбакан m

  Roman: barbakan (sh) m

• Slovak: barbakán m
• Slovene: barbakan m
• Spanish: barbacana (es) f
• Ukrainian: барбака́н m (barbakán)

See also

• bartisan

References

• Samuel Johnson, Dictionary of the English Language (1766)
• John A. Simpson and Edmund S. C. Weiner, editors (1989), “barbican”, in The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition, Oxford: Clarendon Press, →ISBN.