Meaning of Bastille | Babel Free

Definitions

1. Chiefly in French contexts: a bastion (“projecting part of a rampart or other fortification”) or tower of a castle; also, a fortified tower or other building; or a small citadel or fortress.
2. A former fortress and prison in Paris, France, the storming of which in 1789 began the French Revolution.
3. A jail or prison, especially one regarded as mistreating its prisoners.
   figuratively
4. Synonym of workhouse (“an institution for homeless poor people funded by the local parish, where the able-bodied were required to work”).
   British, derogatory, figuratively
5. The fortified encampment of an army besieging a place; also, any of the buildings in such an encampment.
   historical

Equivalents

Examples

“H' incounters Talgol, routs the Bear⟳, / And takes the Fidler Prisoner; / Conveys him to enchanted Castle, / There shuts him fast in wooden Bastile.”

“Thither arriv'd th' advent'rous Knight / And bold Squire from their Steeds alight, / At th' outward Wall, near which [there] stands / A Bastile built t'imprison hands; / By strange enchantment made to fetter / The lesser parts, and free the greater. / For though the Body may creep⟳ through, / The Hands in Grate are fast enough.”

“―The devil it is! ſaid I—but I vvill go to ten thouſand Baſtiles firſt— […]”

“But Nigel was somewhat immured within the Bastile of his rank, as some philosopher, (Tom Paine, we think⟳,) has happily enough expressed that sort⟳ of shyness which men of dignified situations are apt to be beset with, […]”

“Whithersoever you choose⟳; but by what means of conveyance[?] […] Shall it be the Great Northern, hard by Battle Bridge and Pentonville's frowning bastille?”

“VVhen they ſhould have⟳ ſtood to it in field, and fought, then they fled back to their tends: vvhen they vvere to guard and defend⟳ their trench and rampart, they ſurrendered them to the enemy: good no vvhere, neither in battel nor in baſtil.”

CEFR level