laager
Americannoun
verb (used with or without object)
noun
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(in Africa) a camp, esp one defended by a circular formation of wagons
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military a place where armoured vehicles are parked
verb
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to form (wagons) into a laager
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(tr) to park (armoured vehicles) in a laager
Etymology
Origin of laager
1840–50; < Afrikaans laer, earlier lager; cognate with German Lager camp. See lair 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.
The security estate--a walled-off cluster of houses protected by razor wire, electric fences, motion detectors and guards--is the 21st century laager.
From Time • Feb. 28, 2013
The ancestors of the white Afrikaners, 19th century Dutch settlers, had their own response to overwhelming danger: circling their wagons in an impenetrable laager.
From Time • Feb. 28, 2013
Pistorius lives on a golf estate, which exemplifies all the elements of "semigration" to gated communities and the laager mentality after apartheid.
From The Guardian • Feb. 22, 2013
Some analysts suspect that even in South Africa, sanctions that devastated rather than only damaged the economy might have produced a laager backlash.
From Time Magazine Archive
As I returned from a visit to the women's laager Colonel Baden-Powell was lying in his easy-chair beneath the roof of the verandah of the Headquarters Office.
From The Siege of Mafeking (1900) by Hamilton, J. Angus
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.
