crenellation

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English

WOTD – 28 April 2010

Etymology

A tower parapet with crenellation.

From crenellate +‎ -ion (suffix indicating an action or process, or its result). Crenellate is derived from French créneler (“to form the shape of a crenel, crenellate”), from Old French crenel (“crenel, embrasure”) (modern French créneau) (from Latin *crēnella, diminutive of crēna (“incision; notch”); compare Old French cren (“a notch”)) + -er (suffix forming infinitives of first conjugation verbs).[1]

Pronunciation

Noun

crenellation (countable and uncountable, plural crenellations)

  1. (countable, uncountable) A pattern along the top of a parapet (fortified wall), most often in the form of multiple, regular, rectangular spaces in the top of the wall, through which arrows or other weaponry may be shot, especially as used in medieval European architecture.
    • 1922, Michael Arlen, “3/6/1”, in “Piracy”: A Romantic Chronicle of These Days‎:
      This villa was long and low and white, and severe after its manner : for upon and about it were none of those playful ebullitions of taste, such as conical towers, domed roofs, embattlements, statues, coloured tiles and crenellations, such as are dear to architects of villas all the world over.
  2. (uncountable) The act of crenellating; adding a top row that looks like the top of a medieval castle.
  3. (countable) Any of a series of notches with fancied resemblance to such battlements, as for example around the bezel of a flashlight.

Alternative forms

Hypernyms

Coordinate terms

  • castellation (overlaps synonymously in the architectural sense; coordinate in the machinery sense, whereas the same concept is invoked but the words are used in idiomatically non-interchangeable ways, as with crenellated flashlight bezels but castellated nuts)

Translations

References

  1. ^ Compare “crenellate | crenelate, v.”, in OED Online Paid subscription required⁠, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1893; “crenellation, v.”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.

Further reading

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