bartisan

English

Alternative forms

• bartizan

Etymology

Borrowed by the Scottish novelist Walter Scott (see quotation) from Middle Scots bartisan, variant of bartising, from Middle English bretasynge. Doublet of bratticing.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /bɑːtɪˈzæn/

Noun

bartisan (plural bartisans)

1. (architecture) A parapet with battlements projecting from the top of a tower in a castle or church.
   • 1819 December 20 (indicated as 1820), Walter Scott, chapter X, in Ivanhoe; a Romance. […], volume II, Edinburgh: […] Archibald Constable and Co.; London: Hurst, Robinson, and Co. […], →OCLC, page 165:

     she soon found it had no communication with any other part of the battlements, being an isolated bartisan, or balcony, secured, as usual, by a parapet, with embrasures, at which a few archers might be stationed for defending the turret, and flanking with their shot the wall of the castle on that side.

   • 1980, Gene Wolfe, chapter XIV, in The Shadow of the Torturer (The Book of the New Sun; 1), New York: Simon & Schuster, →ISBN, pages 131–132:

     There were flambeaux on staggering poles every ten strides or so, and at intervals of about a hundred strides, bartizans whose guardroom windows glared like fireworks clung to the bridge piers.