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)
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
Brodsky, future winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, lived in a single room that had been part of a palatial enfilade.
From New York Times ● Sep. 12, 2021
Others are escort sprints where you have to guide a vulnerable ally through enfilade fire.
From Time ● Aug. 28, 2017
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
The salient shuts in the end of the valley and enfilades it.
From Attack An Infantry Subaltern's Impression of July 1st, 1916 by Masefield, John
"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 Bairnsfather, Bruce
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 Davis, Richard Harding
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 Reed, John Calvin
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 Frye, Major W. E
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
By means of these traverses each section of the trench becomes a separate trench, and the whole of it cannot be enfiladed.
From The Childrens' Story of the War, Volume 3 (of 10) From the First Battle of Ypres to the End of the Year 1914 by Parrott, James Edward
The two trouées or openings, in particular, already mentioned, by which it was foreseen the Allies would endeavour to force an entrance, were so enfiladed by cross batteries as to be wellnigh unassailable.
From Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 60, No. 369, July 1846 by Various
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
The result, however, was that the Irish Tynesiders were exposed on their right to a deadly enfilading fire that swept across from Oviliers, which was not yet in British possession.
From The Irish on the Somme Being a Second Series of 'The Irish at the Front' by MacDonagh, Michael
They had exposed themselves to the enfilading fire of the guns on the western slope of Cemetery Hill; that exposure sealed their fate.
From Three Years in the Federal Cavalry by Glazier, Willard W.
Different from our trench, which was protected from enfilading only by cross walls at intervals, this trench zigzagged; moreover, its parapet was wattled.
From At Plattsburg by French, Allen
Our men were exposed to an enfilading fire, not being supported by the divisions intended to co-operate in the movement.
From A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital by Jones, John Beauchamp
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.
