turret

From Middle English touret, from Old French torete (French tourette), diminutive of tour (“tower”), from Latin turris. See tower.

• (UK, US) enPR: tŭr'ĭt, IPA^(key): /ˈtʌɹ.ɪt/, /ˈtʊɹ.ɪt/

  • Audio (Southern England)

    (file)

• (US) IPA^(key): /ˈtɝ.ɪt/ (accents with the "Hurry-furry" merger)

  • Audio (non native living in the US)

    (file)

• Rhymes: -ʌɹɪt

turret (plural turrets)

1. (architecture) A little tower, frequently a merely ornamental structure at one of the corners of a building or castle.
   • 1836, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., “Poetry: A Metrical Essay”, republished in The Poems of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Boston, Mass.: Ticknor and Fields, 1862, OCLC 5091562, pages 7–8:

     There breathes no being but has some pretence / To that fine instinct called poetic sense; […] / The freeman, casting with unpurchased hand / The vote that shakes the turrets of the land.

   • 1859, Edward Fitzgerald, The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám: The Astronomer-Poet of Persia, page 1:

     Awake! for Morning in the Bowl of Night,
     Has flung the Stone that puts the Stars to Flight:
     And Lo! the Hunter of the East has caught
     The Sultán's Turret in a Noose of light.

2. (historical, military) A siege tower; a movable building, of a square form, consisting of ten or even twenty stories and sometimes one hundred and twenty cubits high, usually moved on wheels, and employed in approaching a fortified place, for carrying soldiers, engines, ladders, casting bridges, and other necessaries.
3. (electronics) A tower-like solder post on a turret board (a circuit board with posts instead of holes).
4. (military) An armoured, rotating gun installation on a fort, ship, aircraft, or armoured fighting vehicle.
5. (rail transport) The elevated central portion of the roof of a passenger car, with sides that are pierced for light and ventilation.

• (military): cupola

• Rutter, rutter