Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A postern.

Etymologies

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Examples

  • “Do, do,” said Mowbray, recklessly; “I thank you, I thank you;” and hastily traversing the garden, as if desirous to get rid at once of his visitor and his own thoughts, he took the shortest road to a little postern-gate, which led into the extensive copsewood, through some part of which Clara had caused a walk to be cut to a little summer-house built of rough shingles, covered with creeping shrubs.

    Saint Ronan's Well 2008

  • Roland Graeme hastened after his royal mistress and her attendants, who had just entered a postern-gate communicating betwixt the castle and the small garden.

    The Abbot 2008

  • The postern-gate of the Hospital for Foundling Children opens, and a young woman comes out.

    No Thoroughfare 2007

  • They then brought round some of the targeteers by way of the postern-gate, and introduced them into the city, hoping to strike panic into the unconscious citizens by the sudden appearance of an armed force in their rear and on both sides of them at once.

    The History of the Peloponnesian War Thucydides 2007

  • The veiled lady who flutters up and down near the postern-gate of the Hospital for Foundling

    No Thoroughfare 2007

  • Their partisans in Toronè, acting with the soldiers who had already got inside, had now broken through the postern-gate, and proceeded to cut the bar which fastened the gates near the market-place.

    The History of the Peloponnesian War Thucydides 2007

  • They ascended the side of the hill on the slope of which the city is built, and slew the sentinels posted on the summit; they then began to break down the postern-gate towards the promontory of Canastraeum.

    The History of the Peloponnesian War Thucydides 2007

  • The application of these relies of the Heart of Mid – Lothian to serve as the postern-gate to a court of modern offices, may be justly ridiculed as whimsical; but yet it is not without interest, that we see the gateway through which so much of the stormy politics of a rude age, and the vice and misery of later times, had found their passage, now occupied in the service of rural economy.

    The Heart of Mid-Lothian 2007

  • The rest of the army proceeded in two divisions under the two generals, one towards the city in case the enemy should come to save the wall, the other to that part of the stockade which adjoined the postern-gate of the city.

    The History of the Peloponnesian War Thucydides 2007

  • The lights which gleamed in the library at unusual hours — the passing shadows which I had myself remarked — the footsteps which might be traced in the morning-dew from the turret-door to the postern-gate in the garden — sounds and sights which some of the servants, and Andrew

    Rob Roy 2005

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