bastion
Americannoun
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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
- bastionary adjective
- bastioned adjective
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; baste 1 ) + -one augmentative suffix
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.
“The intersection of these headwinds is resulting in an operating reality that is challenging the idea of CPG as a bastion of consistency,” the analysts say, “widening the gap between the most and least advantaged.”
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
Juries are a fundamental bastion of democracy, and it’s beyond dangerous to allow powerful and wealthy corporations to shield themselves from ever having to face jurors’ judgment.
From Los Angeles Times
No one’s comfortable saying that that pop music should be a bastion of the wealthy, but solutions to that are not free-market solutions.
From Los Angeles Times
A veteran of Ireland’s war of independence, Moran deplores the political corruption of the 1950s republic from his farmhouse bastion, Great Meadow.
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.
