barbican

• barbacan

From Old French barbacane, of uncertain origin: compare Arabic بَرْبَخ (barbaḵ, “aqueduct, sewer”), and Persian باب‌خانه (bâb-xâne, “gatehouse”).

• IPA^(key): /ˈbɑː(ɹ)bɪkən/

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barbican (plural barbicans)

1. A tower at the entrance to a castle or fortified town.
   • 1958, T[erence] H[anbury] White, chapter V, in The Once and Future King, New York, N.Y.: G. P. Putnam's Sons, →ISBN, book I (The Sword in the Stone):

     The stone part of the drawbridge with its barbican and the bartizans of the gatehouse are in good repair. […] There was a large hidden trapdoor in the floor of the barbican, which would let them into the moat after all.

2. A fortress at the end of a bridge.
3. An opening in the wall of a fortress through which the guns are levelled; a narrow loophole through which arrows and other missiles may be shot.
   • 1922 February, James Joyce, “[Episode 11]”, in Ulysses, Paris: Shakespeare and Company, […], →OCLC:

     Two shafts of soft daylight fell across the flagged floor from the high barbacans.

4. A temporary wooden tower built for defensive purposes.

• (entryway fortification): see guardhouse

• bartisan

• Samuel Johnson, Dictionary of the English Language (1766)
• John A. Simpson and Edmund S. C. Weiner, editors (1989), “barbican”, in The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition, Oxford: Clarendon Press, →ISBN.