''bulwark'' ▫ᴱᴺ Entries

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''bulwark'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260331180822-00-⌔

bulwark - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

Noun

bulwark (plural bulwarks)

• A defensive wall or rampart.
  • ✤ Let thouſands die, their ſlaughtered Carkaſſes
    Shal ſerue for walles and bulwarkes to the reſt:¹
• A defense or safeguard.
  • ✤ The royal navy of England hath ever been its greatest defence, […] the floating bulwark of the island.²
• A breakwater.
• (nautical) The planking or plating along the sides of a nautical vessel above her gunwale that reduces the likelihood of seas washing over the gunwales and people being washed overboard.
  • ✤ Entering that gable-ended Spouter-Inn, you found yourself in a wide, low, straggling entry with old-fashioned wainscots, reminding one of the bulwarks of some condemned old craft.**³
• (figurative) Any means of defence or security.
  • ✤ The party stalwarts constitute the bulwark that ensures the president’s term of office.
  • ✤ Willing to upend the nation’s postwar role as a bulwark against authoritarianism, he promises to usher in a foreign policy rooted in “America First” transactionalism.⁴

Verb

bulwark (third-person singular simple present bulwarks, present participle bulwarking, simple past and past participle bulwarked)

• (transitive) To fortify something with a wall or rampart.
• (transitive) To provide protection of defense for something.

Etymology

From Middle English bulwerk, from Middle Dutch bolwerk, bolwerc and Middle Low German bolwerk, equivalent to bole (“tree trunk”) +‎ work. Cognate with German Bollwerk, Danish bolværk, Swedish bålverk, Dutch bolwerk. Doublet of boulevard (from French boulevard, from Dutch); cognate with Portuguese and Spanish baluarte and Italian baluardo.

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation, Australian) IPA: /ˈbʊl.wək/
• (US) enPR: bo͝ol’wərk, IPA: /ˈbʊl.wɚk/
  • Audio (US): 🔊
• (Scotland, Northern Ireland) IPA: /ˈbʉl.wəɹk/

Printed 2026-06-28.

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Footnotes

1. c. 1587–1588 (date written), [Christopher Marlowe], Tamburlaine the Great. […] The First Part […], 2nd edition, part 1, London: […] [R. Robinson for] Richard Iones, […], published 1592, →OCLC; reprinted as Tamburlaine the Great (A Scolar Press Facsimile), Menston, Yorkshire; London: Scolar Press, 1973, →ISBN, Act III, scene iii: ↩

2. 1765–1769, William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England,, Oxford, Oxfordshire: […] Clarendon Press, →OCLC: ↩

3. 1851 November 14, Herman Melville, chapter 3, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC, page 11: ↩

4. 2024 December 12, Eric Cortellessa, “Donald Trump 2024 TIME Person of the Year”, in Time ‎${}^{[1]}$, archived from the original on 22 December 2024: ↩

Link to original

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