From Middle English portcolyse, from Old French porte colëice, from porte (“door”) + feminine of colëiz (“sliding”), ultimately from Latin colāre.
portcullis (plural portcullises or portcullisses or (rare) portculli or (rare) portscullis)
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portcullis (third-person singular simple present portcullises or portcullisses, present participle portcullising or portcullissing, simple past and past participle portcullised or portcullissed)
Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.
(See the entry for “portcullis”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.)