Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun Same as brough.

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

  • noun archaeology A type of Iron Age stone tower with hollow double-skinned walls found on Orkney and Shetland and parts of the Scottish mainland.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Old Norse borg, from Proto-Germanic *burgz. Compare borough.

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Examples

  • The center of the settlement features a massive round stone watchtower called a broch, approximately 50 feet in diameter and 12-15 feet high, surrounded by well-preserved buildings, some with yellow clay still plastered to the walls.

    Upscale Iron Age Village 2000

  • So far the "broch," or hill fort, was not unlike other hill forts and brochs, of which there are hundreds in Scotland.

    The Clyde Mystery a Study in Forgeries and Folklore Andrew Lang 1878

  • And toward the small family graveyard, near the foot of the broch, where his parents were buried.

    Sick Cycle Carousel 2010

  • Ian's eyes rolled slowly up, as though following the rough stones of the broch upward.

    Sick Cycle Carousel 2010

  • From the side of the mountain above, the broch that gave the small estate its name was no more than another mound of rocks, much like those that lay at the foot of the hills we had been traveling through.

    Sick Cycle Carousel 2010

  • Then there's the manor house, of course-that's modern, "he said, with some pride," and the old broch that we use now for the beasts and the grain.

    Sick Cycle Carousel 2010

  • The old stone broch, situated on a small rise to the rear of the house, rose sixty feet above the ground, cone-topped like a witch's hat, girdled with three rows of tiny arrow-slits.

    Sick Cycle Carousel 2010

  • Sitting on the fence behind the house, I could see tawny fields to the edge of the cliff past the broch, and the mesh of trees on the far side of the pass, dimming to black before the pearly glow of the sky.

    Sick Cycle Carousel 2010

  • "He gave us each a broom, a brush, and a bucket, and pointed us in the direction of the broch," said Jamie, taking up the story.

    Sick Cycle Carousel 2010

  • How about the broch-builders or their successors, living in what is now Caithness and the Northern and/or Western Isles, as a candidate for a culturally distinct tribe who in the 360s AD were called the Attacotti by Ammianus Marcellinus and St Jerome?

    Attacotti Carla 2009

Comments

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  • "An enemy inside my broch ... a burglar ensconced here."

    The Bone People by Keri Hulme, p 40

    February 5, 2017