bastion

American  

[bas-chuhn, -tee-uhn] / ˈbæs tʃən, -ti ən /

noun

bastions plural

1. Fortification. a projecting portion of a rampart or fortification that forms an irregular pentagon attached at the base to the main work.

2. a fortified place.

   Synonyms:

   citadel, stronghold, bulwark, fort, fortress

3. anything seen as preserving or protecting some quality, condition, etc..

   a bastion of solitude; a bastion of democracy.

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bastion British  

/ ˈbæstɪən /

noun

1. a projecting work in a fortification designed to permit fire to the flanks along the face of the wall

2. any fortified place

3. a thing or person regarded as upholding or defending an attitude, principle, etc

   the last bastion of opposition

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Other Word Forms

Derived Forms

• bastionary
  adjective
• bastioned
  adjective

Inflected Forms

Nouns

• bastions
  plural

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.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

bastion bastions

This is Liverpool, the supposed bastion of stability.

From BBC ● May 30, 2026

Iran is no bastion of free expression, in other words, which anyone bopping to those raps about enacting revenge on “the Baal-worshipping Epstein crew” must remember.

From Salon ● Apr. 26, 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

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 ● Mar. 10, 2026

Hull House had become a bastion of progressive thought inhabited by strong-willed young women, “interspersed,” as one visitor put it, “with earnest-faced, self-subordinating and mild-mannered men who slide from room to room apologetically.”

From "The Devil in the White City" by Erik Larson

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

But in West Bengal and Tripura - once the great bastions of Left power - the communists have been reduced to a shadow of their former self.

From BBC ● May 26, 2026

Nazih Yahya, a septuagenarian resident with the wearied tone of someone long accustomed to conflict, expected the Israeli military to treat residents in non-Shiite villages differently from areas it counts as bastions of Hezbollah support.

From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 7, 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

By 1906, even the best-guarded political bastions had been stormed—twenty-nine seats in Parliament had fallen to the Labour Party—sending spasms of anxiety through English high society.

From "The Gene" by Siddhartha Mukherjee

Related Words

• bulwark
• citadel
• fortress
• mainstay
• stronghold