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  1. drawbridge love

Definitions

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

  1. n. A bridge that can be raised or drawn aside either to prevent access or to permit passage beneath it.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

  1. n. A bridge which may be drawn up or let down to admit or hinder communication, or to leave a transverse passage free, as before the gate of a town or castle, or over a navigable river. Formerly also called draught-bridge and draught. See draft. Drawbridges, as applied to fortifications, date only from the beginning of the fourteenth century. At first they spanned the foss, joining the gate of the fort or of the advanced work with its outer bank. Later, draw-bridges formed only the inner portion of the platform of the bridge, the outer portion being stationary. The draw-bridge was usually raised by chains attached to levers projecting from the wall at a proper distance above it, which levers were elevated by heavy weights attached to their inner extremities, the wall forming the fulcrum. When raised, the drawbridge formed a barricade before the gate, thus providing a twofold obstacle to the assailant — a chasm and a strengthened barrier.
  2. n. A bridge one or more sections of which can be lifted or moved aside to permit the passage of boats.

Wiktionary

  1. n. A hinged bridge which can be raised (to prevent its being crossed, as across a moat, or to allow watercraft to travel beneath it).

GNU Webster's 1913

  1. n. See Drawbridge.
  2. n. A bridge of which either the whole or a part is made to be raised up, let down, or drawn or turned aside, to admit or hinder communication at pleasure, as before the gate of a town or castle, or over a navigable river or canal.

WordNet 3.0

  1. n. a bridge that can be raised to block passage or to allow boats or ships to pass beneath it

Etymologies

  1. From draw + bridge. (Wiktionary)

Examples

  • “The time it takes to operate the drawbridge is a significant fraction of the headways of the BRT service proposed to run on the bridge.”

    Neighborhood Activists Still Oppose State’s 520 Option « PubliCola

  • “One cannot have this both ways and the proposed second drawbridge is arguably the worst of all possible outcomes here.”

    Neighborhood Activists Still Oppose State’s 520 Option « PubliCola

  • “Betty desired the man to drive to the drawbridge; and, at the sound of the word drawbridge, various associations of ideas with the drawbridges of ancient times were called up in Miss Warwick's imagination.”

    Tales and Novels — Volume 01

  • “The hall is entered by two bridges, each ending in a drawbridge, which is kept in full working order, and both drawbridges are, and have been for some hundreds of years, hauled up at ten o'clock every night, when the house can only be approached from the park by means of a boat.”

    What to See in England

  • “The drawbridge was the precarious ground of many a midnight strife, till the daring gallantry of Nigel Bruce became the theme of every tongue; a gallantry equalled only by the consummate skill which he displayed, in retreating within his entrenchments frequently without the loss of a single man either as killed or wounded.”

    The Days of Bruce Vol 1 A Story from Scottish History

  • “The drawbridge is the only access to the interior of the castle.”

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  • “A man's home is his castle, of which he is king, and the positioning of the drawbridge is the king's prerogative.”

    Woot! - One Day, One Deal

  • “This package includes three coordinated sets of tools: "drawbridge", an exceptionally powerful bridging filter package; "tiger", a set of convenient yet thorough machine checking programs; and "netlog", a set of intrusion detection network monitoring programs.”

    Taco Bell Syndicate Issue #1 by Shredder

  • “But the Romans hurriedly built ships and placed upon each a kind of drawbridge, fitted with great hooks called grappling-irons.”

    Introductory American History

  • “The scene is on the summit of the pass close to the hospice, or what seems to have been a hospice at that time, -- I do not remember any such at present, -- a small square built house, built as if partly for a fortress, with a detached flight of stone steps in front of it, and a kind of drawbridge to the door.”

    On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature

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hypernyms (2)

Words that are more generic or abstract

  1. bridge
  1. span

same context (20)

Words that are found in similar contexts

  1. portcullis
  2. battlements
  3. battlement
  4. bastion
  1. palisade
  2. rampart
  3. causeway
  4. moat
  1. pylon
  2. stockade
  3. glacis
  4. bailey
  1. dyke
  2. archway
  3. viaduct
  4. jetty
  1. fortification
  2. citadel
  3. footbridge
  4. turret

reverse dictionary (28)

Words that contain this word in their definition

  1. draw
  2. bascule bridge
  3. lift bridge
  4. counterbalance
  5. hoist bridge
  1. pontlevis
  2. swipe-beam
  3. barbican
  4. bridge-pit
  5. draught-bridge
  1. leaf-bridge
  2. lifting-bridge
  3. drawbridge
  4. bascule
  5. backup
  1. pivot bridge
  2. plyer
  3. rolling bridge
  4. swing bridge
  5. swivel bridge
  1. turning bridge
  2. balance-beam
  3. border-tower
  4. draft
  5. plier
  1. bridge-coupler
  2. bridge-lock
  3. rail-lock

tags (1)

Free-form, user-generated categorization

  1. castle

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Lists

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Comments

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  • chained_bear "A bridge or roadway across a moat or ditch that lifts (lifted) to make crossing impossible." (added from an online glossary because Weirdnet got it only mostly right) Aug 25, 2008

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‘drawbridge’ has been looked up 1454 times, added to 11 lists, commented on 1 time, and has a Scrabble score of 18.