embrasureとは 意味・読み方・使い方

語源

From Middle French embrasure.

発音

• IPA^(key): /ɪmˈbɹeɪʒə(ɹ)/

名詞

embrasure (複数形 embrasures)

1. (architecture, military) Any of the indentations between the merlons of a battlement; an opening in a wall or parapet through which ordnance can be fired.
   • 1938, George Orwell [pseudonym; Eric Arthur Blair], chapter 6, in Homage to Catalonia‎^[1], London: Secker & Warburg:

     But there were less casualties than might have been expected, and the barricade rose steadily, a wall of concrete two feet thick, with embrasures for two machine-guns and a small field gun.

2. (figuratively) Any small protected space.
   • 1938, Norman Lindsay, Age of Consent, 1st Australian edition, Sydney, N.S.W.: Ure Smith, published 1962, →OCLC, page 128:

     She had a special seat there, a little embrasure between two upright slabs of sandstone, which was sheltered and private.

3. The slanting indentation in a wall for a door or window, such that the space is larger on the inside than the outside.
   • 1916, James Joyce, chapter 3, in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man‎^[2]:

     When the fit had spent itself he walked weakly to the window and, lifting the sash, sat in a corner of the embrasure and leaned his elbow upon the sill.

   • 2009, Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall, Fourth Estate, published 2010, page 155:

     Now he stands in a window embrasure, Liz's prayer book in hand.

4. (obsolete) An embrace.
   • c. 1602, William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Troylus and Cressida”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act IV, scene iv]:

     And suddenly; where injury of chance / Puts back leave-taking, justles roughly by / All time of pause, rudely beguiles our lips / Of all rejoindure, forcibly prevents / Our lock'd embrasures, strangles our dear vows / Even in the birth of our own labouring breath:

Further reading

• embrasure on Wikipedia.