bastion
Americannoun
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bastions
plural
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Fortification. a projecting portion of a rampart or fortification that forms an irregular pentagon attached at the base to the main work.
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a fortified place.
- Synonyms:
- citadel, stronghold, bulwark, fort, fortress
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anything seen as preserving or protecting some quality, condition, etc..
a bastion of solitude; a bastion of democracy.
noun
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a projecting work in a fortification designed to permit fire to the flanks along the face of the wall
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any fortified place
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a thing or person regarded as upholding or defending an attitude, principle, etc
the last bastion of opposition
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of bastion
1590–1600; < Middle French < Italian bastione, equivalent to Upper Italian bastí ( a ) bastion, originally, fortified, built (cognate with Italian bastita, past participle of bastire to build < Germanic; see baste 1) + -one augmentative suffix
Explanation
When the battle is getting long and the odds are getting longer, retreat to your bastion to regroup and prepare for the next round of fighting. A bastion is a stronghold or fortification that remains intact. French Independence Day, or Bastille Day (July 14), commemorates the storming in 1789 of the French king's prison/fort, the Bastille. Bastion and Bastille share the root bast, which means "build." Bastion can refer to any place to which one turns for safety; that can include not only buildings but also concepts, ideas, and even beliefs. The Church, for example, is a bastion of many religious beliefs.
Vocabulary lists containing bastion
Lord of the Flies
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A Raisin in the Sun
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100 SAT Words Beginning with "B"
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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.
See Examples For:
To others, though, he is a bastion of truth who has shone a light on the darker side of the beautiful game.
From BBC ● Sep. 26, 2026
Home prices in America have changed dramatically over the last century — but the Midwest has remained a bastion of affordability through it all.
From MarketWatch ● Aug. 22, 2026
On Monday it won a sweeping victory in state elections in West Bengal, India’s fourth most populous state, long regarded as an opposition bastion beyond the BJP’s grasp.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 6, 2026
Small towns, villages and hamlets -- home to around half of the central European nation's 9.5 million people -- have long been the bastion of the ruling Fidesz party.
From Barron's ● Mar. 29, 2026
This side of the castle, perhaps a hundred feet high, was the pink bastion they had seen from the mountain-top.
From "Lord of the Flies" by William Golding
Leo's predecessor Francis largely overlooked many of Europe's traditional bastions of Catholicism where, like Spain, religious observance has been falling rapidly.
From Barron's ● Jun. 6, 2026
With record-keeping fees under pressure, he said in an interview that managed accounts are “one of the last bastions of good revenue production,” adding that record-keepers “love” participants enrolling because “the revenue is much better.”
From MarketWatch ● Feb. 20, 2026
Yet many of his strongest bastions of support lie in central Brooklyn, according to voting and donation records.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 27, 2025
And to build up new trees next to older ones, so that wildlife can flow "from these ancient bastions into the new woods and hedges and individual trees that we're planting".
From BBC ● Jul. 14, 2025
The fair taught men and women steeped only in the necessary to see that cities did not have to be dark, soiled, and unsafe bastions of the strictly pragmatic.
From "The Devil in the White City" by Erik Larson
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Get a wordDefinitions 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.
