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
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 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
The next and still more improved form of work is the bastioned fort, which consists of projecting bastions at the corners, the fire from which enfilades the ditches.
From The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 Devoted to Literature and National Policy by Various
"It's not much of a place for it," he said; "where we ought to have it is to the right of the sap, so that it enfilades the whole front of that trench."
From Bullets & Billets by Bruce Bairnsfather
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
The heights were soon captured, and a position secured from which the rebel lines could be enfiladed.
From The Greater Republic A History of the United States by Charles Morris
They failed to realize that with the Allied line pressed they were in danger of being enfiladed.
From The Dispatch-Riders The Adventures of Two British Motor-cyclists in the Great War by Percy F. (Percy Francis) Westerman
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
Fusiliers to change direction to their right, extend, and endeavour to beat down the enemy's enfilading musketry, which was pouring across the plain, here smooth as a glacis and as destitute of cover.
From History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government by Great Britain. War Office
The forts were connected by a curtain of rifle-pits containing a re-entrant angle, thus providing for a reciprocal enfilading fire in case either was attacked.
From The Black Phalanx African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the War of 1812, and the Civil War by Joseph T. (Joseph Thomas) Wilson
The other ships were to fire at angles with the fort so as to make an enfilading fire as much as possible.
From The Story of a Strange Career Being the Autobiography of a Convict; an Authentic Document by Anonymous
The Gunners, as usual, behaved with the utmost gallantry, but they too came under the same enfilading fire as the Dorsets and every man of the detachment except Captain Boscawen fell either killed or wounded.
From The First Seven Divisions Being a Detailed Account of the Fighting from Mons to Ypres by Ernest W. Hamilton
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.
