bastille
Americannoun
plural
bastilles-
(initial capital letter) a fortress in Paris, used as a prison, built in the 14th century and destroyed July 14, 1789.
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any prison or jail, especially one conducted in a tyrannical way.
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a fortified tower, as of a castle; a small fortress; citadel.
noun
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The anniversary of the attack, Bastille Day, is the most important national holiday in France.
Etymology
Origin of bastille
1350–1400; Middle English bastile < Middle French, probably alteration of bastide bastide, with -ile (< Medieval Latin, Latin -īle noun suffix of place) replacing -ide; replacing Middle English bastel < Old French basstel, with -el similarly replacing -ide
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.
But when it came, Youlou's exit had all the revolutionary trimmings, including a storming of the local bastille and a mob outside the palace howling for bread.
From Time Magazine Archive
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On Bastille Day the little bastille in the Caribbean fell.
From Time Magazine Archive
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He declared that France "must not become a prisoner in the great bastille over which would float the Anglo-Saxon flags."
From Time Magazine Archive
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Another is an American who has built a rambling bastille of words in which meanings are thrown into dungeons, to be reached only through endless labyrinths of painstaking prose.
From Time Magazine Archive
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They had come by forest paths from Choisy way, and anon all our guns on the boulevard of the Pierrefonds Gate burst forth at once against the English bastille over against it.
From A Monk of Fife by Lang, Andrew
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.