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barbican.

A tower at the entrance to a castle or fortified town.

8 characters3 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/ˈbɑːbɪkən/Received-Pronunciation/ˈbɑɹbɪkən/General-American
  1. A tower at the entrance to a castle or fortified town.

  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.

  4. A temporary wooden tower built for defensive purposes.

Where this word comes from

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

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.