enfilade
Americannoun
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Military.
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a position of works, troops, etc., making them subject to a sweeping fire from along the length of a line of troops, a trench, a battery, etc.
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the fire thus directed.
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Architecture.
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an axial arrangement of doorways connecting a suite of rooms with a vista down the whole length of the suite.
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an axial arrangement of mirrors on opposite sides of a room so as to give an effect of an infinitely long vista.
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verb (used with object)
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enfilades,
present (3rd person singular)
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enfiladed,
past participle, past
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enfilading
present participle
noun
verb
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to subject (a position or formation) to fire from a flank
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to position (troops or guns) so as to be able to fire at a flank
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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enfiladesimple
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enfiladessimple
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have enfiladedperfect
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has enfiladedperfect
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am enfiladingprogressive
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are enfiladingprogressive
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is enfiladingprogressive
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have been enfiladingperfect progressive
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has been enfiladingperfect progressive
Past
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enfiladedsimple
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had enfiladedperfect
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was enfiladingprogressive
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were enfiladingprogressive
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had been enfiladingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of enfilade
1695–1705; < French, equivalent to enfil ( er ) to thread, string ( en- en- 1 + -filer, derivative of fil < Latin fīlum thread) + -ade -ade 1
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:
The show, which is organized by Aperture in partnership with Kwame S. Brathwaite, Brathwaite’s son and director of the Kwame Brathwaite Archive, is arranged in three galleries along an enfilade.
From New York Times ● Nov. 23, 2022
Others are escort sprints where you have to guide a vulnerable ally through enfilade fire.
From Time ● Aug. 28, 2017
Anybody in the enfilade of dove gray salons, where Christian Dior himself once trod, could feel the hand of history.
From New York Times ● Jan. 26, 2010
Wright put a winter garden on one of the terraces, which, he explains, “made a space for entertaining in an enfilade with the breakfast room and the elliptical dining room.”
From Architectural Digest ● Dec. 21, 2009
Up ahead, the plesiosaur riders were probably readying their artillery, or simply loading their muskets to enfilade them as soon as they were in range.
From "Dactyl Hill Squad" by Daniel José Older
Ehrenbreitstein completely commands all the adjacent country and enfilades the embouchure of the Moselle which flows into the Rhine at Coblentz, where there is an elegant stone bridge across the Moselle.
From After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 by Major W. E Frye
So necessity, the mother of invention, suggested to him a formation which poured something like two crossing enfilades into the head of the cavalry column.
From The Brothers' War by John Calvin Reed
The salient shuts in the end of the valley and enfilades it.
From Attack An Infantry Subaltern's Impression of July 1st, 1916 by John Masefield
Everything is jumbled under this terrible fire which enfilades from all sides.
From Kings, Queens and Pawns An American Woman at the Front by Mary Roberts Rinehart
The trench enfilades the valley beyond, and the valley is covered with barbed-wire and gun-pits.
From With the French in France and Salonika by Richard Harding Davis
Traveling there, Ireland photographed enfiladed rooms in knotty pine, and glass-front built-ins abandoned to a lone rifle and scant rows of books.
From New York Times ● Jul. 14, 2022
"They’re simple and not enfiladed, so the progression from one to another never feels monotonous. You always pass through a connective space with natural light."
From Architectural Digest ● Sep. 9, 2014
The next charge struck die angle at the boulder, at the colors, lapped around it, ran into the new line, was enfiladed, collapsed.
From "The Killer Angels: The Classic Novel of the Civil War" by Michael Shaara
Here and there the men crossed more easily, and that led to some parts of the line getting farther forward then others and so to being enfiladed on the right or left.
From From Bapaume to Passchendaele, 1917 by Philip Gibbs
He had carried an army of 1,600 men from between two others of nearly equal numbers, who had completely enfiladed him, without leaving a man upon the ground—ay, without leaving a trace of his retreat.
From Osceola the Seminole The Red Fawn of the Flower Land by Mayne Reid
Batteries of German cannon and machine guns, perched on the cliffs and hidden in caves, could turn an enfilading fire on the beaches, which bristled with barbed wire.
From Time Magazine Archive
From this spot Tibetan riflemen were enfilading our troops held in reserve.
From The Unveiling of Lhasa by Edmund Candler
Who can forget Colonel Funston’s gallant exploit in crossing the Rio Grande on a raft under fire with two companies of Kansas Infantry and enfilading the Tagals’ position?
From The Inhabitants of the Philippines by Frederic H. Sawyer
Thus one party could assist the other by enfilading the attacking force, unless they were in sufficient strength to pursue both together.
From Tom Burke Of "Ours", Volume I by Charles James Lever
By consulting the map it will be seen that the artillery positions south of Villers direct an enfilading fire on the plateau of Flaucourt and points near by.
From The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) Battle of Jutland Bank; Russian Offensive; Kut-El-Amara; East Africa; Verdun; The Great Somme Drive; United States and Belligerents; Summary of Two Years' War by Allen L. (Allen Leon) Churchill
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.
