broch

American  

[brokh, bruhkh] / brɒx, brʌx /

Obsolete, brough

noun

1. a circular stone tower built around the beginning of the Christian era, having an inner and an outer wall, found on the Orkney Islands, Shetland Islands, the Hebrides, and the mainland of Scotland.

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broch British  

/ brɒk, brɒx /

noun

1. (in Scotland) a circular dry-stone tower large enough to serve as a fortified home; they date from the Iron Age and are found esp in the north and the islands

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Etymology

Origin of broch

First recorded in 1645–55; Scots, metathetic variant of burgh

Example Sentences

The three sites in Shetland, which preserve examples of broch architecture, were nominated together under the banner of the Crucible of Iron Age Scotland.

From BBC • Mar. 22, 2011

Oldest part of the grim little hamlet was a "broch tower": a crude donjon keep.

From Time Magazine Archive

Now this loch, says Scott, was, at the time when the broch was inhabited, open to the flow of tide water.

From The Clyde Mystery a Study in Forgeries and Folklore by Lang, Andrew

In a note to Ivanhoe, and in his Northern tour of 1814, Scott describes a stone causeway to a broch on an artificial island p. 48in Loch Cleik-him-in, near Lerwick. 

From The Clyde Mystery a Study in Forgeries and Folklore by Lang, Andrew

Moreover, the appearance of an unique and previously unheard-of set of inscribed stones, in a site of the usual broch and crannog period, is not invariably ascribed to forgery, even by the most orthodox archaeologists. 

From The Clyde Mystery a Study in Forgeries and Folklore by Lang, Andrew