bivouac
Americannoun
-
a military encampment made with tents or improvised shelters, usually without shelter or protection from enemy fire.
-
the place used for such an encampment.
verb (used without object)
noun
verb
Etymology
Origin of bivouac
1700–10; < French < Swiss German bīwacht auxiliary patrol, equivalent to bī- by- + wacht patrol, watch
Explanation
If you ever draped a blanket over bushes or lawn chairs in the backyard and pretended to bunk down under it when you were a kid, you’ve made a bivouac — a temporary, makeshift camp with little or no cover. Bivouac comes from the 18th-century German word biwacht, and originally meant a patrol of ordinary citizens who helped the town’s night watchmen. Nowadays, you’ll most often see it used as a noun, but it can be a verb too — and it's often associated with soldiers, though that’s not essential. If you tend to sleepwalk, you might not want to bivouac at the edge of that cliff; make your bivouac in the meadow instead.
Vocabulary lists containing bivouac
Code Talker
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Into Thin Air
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Tolkien Reading Day, List 6
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
They also allege he started out two hours too late and had failed to take "enough emergency bivouac equipment".
From BBC • Feb. 17, 2026
The bivouac fell into a ravine, but no one happened to be in the building at the time.
From Scientific American • Apr. 3, 2023
The whole population was busy all night, and the streets are now like a bivouac with sleeping men.
From Seattle Times • Oct. 7, 2021
And now comes the coronavirus, which has prompted people to bivouac in their homes, theaters to put in place social-distancing restrictions and studios to postpone most theatrical releases through the end of April.
From New York Times • Mar. 15, 2020
Five minutes after waking up, I was climbing away from the bivouac.
From "Into the Wild" by Jon Krakauer
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
