英和和英

語源

From French embrasure, from embras(er) +‎ -ure, from Old French embrasure (“cut at a slant, make a groove or furrow”), from em- +‎ braser (“cut at a slant”).

発音

• IPA: /ɪmˈbɹeɪʒə(ɹ)/

名詞

embrasure (plural 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.

   Coordinate term: loophole

   Near-synonym: crenel (sometimes hyponymous technically)

   • 1938 April, George Orwell [pseudonym; Eric Arthur Blair], chapter VI, in Homage to Catalonia, London: Secker & Warburg, →OCLC:

     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.

   • 1980, AA Book of British Villages, Drive Publications Ltd, page 311, about the church at Pembridge:

     The walls are slitted with embrasures through which bowmen could fire, indicating that the belfry also served as a stronghold during border skirmishes.

2. (figurative) 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:

     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 (date written), 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:

派生語

参照