FORTRESS

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does fortress mean? 

• FORTRESS (noun)
  The noun FORTRESS has 1 sense:

1. a fortified defensive structure

  Familiarity information: FORTRESS used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• FORTRESS (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A fortified defensive structure

Classified under:

Nouns denoting man-made objects

Synonyms:

fort; fortress

Hypernyms ("fortress" is a kind of...):

defence; defense; defensive structure (a structure used to defend against attack)

Meronyms (parts of "fortress"):

battlement; crenelation; crenellation (a rampart built around the top of a castle with regular gaps for firing arrows or guns)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "fortress"):

alcazar (any of various Spanish fortresses or palaces built by the Moors)

martello tower (a circular masonry fort for coastal defence)

presidio (a fortress established in the southwestern United States by the Spanish in order to protect their missions and other holdings)

sconce (a small fort or earthwork defending a ford, pass, or castle gate)

Instance hyponyms:

Alhambra (a fortified Moorish palace built near Granada by Muslim kings in the Middle Ages)

Bastille (a fortress built in Paris in the 14th century and used as a prison in the 17th and 18th centuries; it was destroyed July 14, 1789 at the start of the French Revolution)

Tower of London (a fortress in London on the Thames; used as a palace and a state prison and now as a museum containing the crown jewels)

Machu Picchu (Inca fortress city in the Andes in Peru discovered in 1911; it may have been built in the 15th century)

 Context examples 

To Alleyne and to John, however, it appeared to be as great and as stout a fortress as could be built by the hands of man.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

It was the most romantic thing I ever saw—the river, the bridge of boats, the great fortress opposite, moonlight everywhere, and music fit to melt a heart of stone.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

The youth wandered on, and after some time came to a fortress where he begged for a night’s lodging.

(Fairy Tales, by The Brothers Grimm)

The 60,000 newly discovered structures include raised highways, urban centers with sidewalks, homes, terraces, industrial-sized agricultural fields, irrigation canals, ceremonial centers, a 30-meter high pyramid, fortresses and moats.

(Hidden Mayan Civilization Revealed in Guatemala Jungle, VOA)

The cub painted a high-light picture of his poor little room, its oil-stove and the one chair, and of the death's-head tramp who kept him company and who looked as if he had just emerged from twenty years of solitary confinement in some fortress dungeon.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

I knew well that I risked death; for any drug that so potently controlled and shook the very fortress of identity, might, by the least scruple of an overdose or at the least inopportunity in the moment of exhibition, utterly blot out that immaterial tabernacle which I looked to it to change.

(The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson)