Search the Dictionary

Any defensive work consisting of at least a trench or ditch and a parapet made from the earth thrown up in making such a ditch. On our side, we have thrown up intrenchments on Winter and Prospect Hills. Washington.

An opening between the corbels which support a projecting parapet, or in the floor of a gallery or the roof of a portal, shooting or dropping missiles upen assailants attacking the base of the walls. Also, the construction of such defenses, in general, when of this character. See Illusts. of Battlement and Castle.…

outline, by which the form of the work is determined. It is usually the crest line of the parapet in fieldworks, or the top line of the escarp in permanent fortifications.

One of the solid parts of a battlemented parapet; a battlement. See Illust. of Battlement.

A kind of platform with a parapet, usually of an oval form, and generally erected in marshy grounds to cover a gate of a fortified place. [R.]

A slope or sloping toward the front; as, the plongée of a parapet; the plongée of a shell in its course. [Sometimes written plonge.]

at proper intervals of wooden profiles, to show to the workmen the sectional form of the parapets at those points.

Any sloping member, other than a purely constructional one, such as a continuous parapet to a staircase.

A broad embankment of earth round a place, upon which the parapet is raised. It forms the substratum of every permanent fortification. Mahan.

A work having two parapets whose faces unite so as to form a salient angle toward the enemy.

ut three feet long, used in sapping, to close the crevices between the gabions before the parapet is made. -- Sap roller (Mil.), a large gabion, six or seven feet long, filled with fascines, which the sapper sometimes rolls along before him for protection from the fire of an enemy.

The slope of the ditch nearest the parapet; the escarp.

rward, an out-of-door flight of stairs of from seven to fourteen steps, with platform and parapets, leading to an entrance door some distance above the street; the French perron. Hence, any porch, platform, entrance stairway, or small veranda, at a house door. [U. S.]

The top of the banquette, on which soldiers stand to fire over the parapet.