half-moon bastion
- noun
- Archaic
:
bastión en media luna
- In the 16th century, engineers experimented with the half-moon bastion before better designs replaced it.
Examples
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Restoration plans revealed the original foundations of a half-moon bastion beneath the modern walls.
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The castle's half-moon bastion offered a unique vantage point over the valley.
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The half-moon bastion was a key feature of the fortress.
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Many half-moon bastions were built in the 16th century.
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In the 16th century, engineers experimented with the half-moon bastion to improve military defenses.
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Restoration plans revealed the original foundations of a half-moon bastion that once protected the city.
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The architect studied the design of the half-moon bastion for inspiration in modern fortress construction.
Synonyms
A curved wall shaped like a half circle that sticks out from a fort to protect it
Surface Forms
Morphology
half-moon + bastion
The meaning 'a bastion shaped like a half-moon' is directly and compositionally derivable from 'half-moon' (crescent-shaped) plus 'bastion' (a protruding defensive structure). This is a descriptive noun–noun combination that follows regular English compounding and is cross-linguistically transparent, so a B1 learner who knows the constituents would readily understand it.
Etymology
Half-moon bastion comes from its shape: a curved half-moon wall called a bastion that let soldiers fire along the front and protect the ground below. Built in the 1500s, these moon-shaped defenses were later replaced by better designs, so today the name means that old, curved part of a fortress.
