Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A group of temporary billets for troops.
  • noun Assignment of troops to temporary quarters.
  • noun A permanent military installation in India.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A part or division of a town or village assigned to a particular regiment of troops; especially, in India, a permanent military station forming the nucleus of the European quarter of a city.
  • noun plural The dwelling-places occupied by an army during any suspension of active operations in the field; the temporary shelter, other than that of tents, which an army may occasionally take, as when, during a season of excessive heat, the troops are distributed in villages, houses, etc., but so as not to be widely scattered; military quarters; specifically, the winter quarters of an army.
  • noun The placing of troops in temporary quarters.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun A town or village, or part of a town or village, assigned to a body of troops for quarters; temporary shelter or place of rest for an army; quarters.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun Temporary military living quarters.
  • noun A town or village, or part of a town or village, assigned to a body of troops for quarters.
  • noun India A permanent military station.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun temporary living quarters specially built by the army for soldiers

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[From canton, to quarter soldiers.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From French cantonnement.

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Examples

  • Muyange is so far the only so-called cantonment camp that is operational thus far in Burundi.

    ANC Daily News Briefing 2003

  • The cantonment was a poor place for a garrison to be, without proper defences, with its principal stores outside its walls, and some of the principal officers - Burnes himself, for example - quartered two miles away in Kabul City.

    Flashman Fraser, George MacDonald, 1925- 1969

  • The cantonment is the head quarters of the British army on this side the Deccan.

    Narrative of a Voyage to India; of a Shipwreck on board the Lady Castlereagh; and a Description of New South Wales W. B. Cramp

  • Near what was to have been the main portion of the cantonment was the school of pistol instruction and beyond this the six-pounder gun school and tank fighting zone.

    Birth and Death of a Camp. Armistice Puts an End to the Feverish Activity of Camp Polk, at Raleigh, 1919

  • On May 17, 1917, Col.I. W. Littell, of the Regular Army, was detailed to assemble and direct an organization to be known as the cantonment division of the Quartermaster Corps, whose duties were to consist of providing quarters and camps for the training and housing of the New

    World's War Events, Vol. II 1902

  • The road from Dearsley's pay-shed to the cantonment was a narrow and uneven one, and, traversed by three very inexperienced palanquin-bearers, one of whom was sorely battered about the head, must have been a path of torment.

    Indian Tales Rudyard Kipling 1900

  • The road from Dearsley's pay-shed to the cantonment was a narrow and uneven one, and, traversed by three very inexperienced palanquin-bearers, one of whom was sorely battered about the head, must have been a path of torment.

    Soldier Stories Rudyard Kipling 1900

  • His son John was born in the small thatched-roofed, mud-walled cantonment, which is even to-day eighty miles from the nearest railway, in the heart of a scrubby, tigerish country.

    The Day's Work - Volume 1 Rudyard Kipling 1900

  • The journal of Captain Cooke states that the battalion marched from Fort Leavenworth, which was then called a cantonment, and, strange to say, had been abandoned by the Third Infantry on account of its unhealthiness.

    The old Santa Fe trail The Story of a Great Highway Henry Inman 1868

  • There is quite an eminence nearly a mile back of the new cantonment, which is called La Butte de Terre by the French, and Wudjuwong, [18] or Place of the Mountain, by the natives.

    Memoirs of 30 Years with the Indian Tribes on the American Frontiers Schoolcraft, H R 1851

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