☼ Concept Map

''citadel'' ▫ᴱᴺ Entries

↩ 🔳 🔳 🔳

Primary

⁀➴

''citadel'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260628200137-00-⌔

citadel - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

🖼️ ➺

Noun

citadel (plural citadels)

  • A strong fortress that sits high above a city.
    • ✤ In the city’s midst the gleaming marble of a thousand steps climbed to the citadel where arose four pinnacles beckoning to heaven, and midmost between the pinnacles there stood the dome, vast, as the gods had dreamed it.1
  • (sometimes figurative) A stronghold or fortified place.
    • ✤ Intrenched within the citadel of our apartment, and cheered by the comfortings of a coal fire, we passed the day in letter-writing, conversation, or gazing from the sheltered security of our windows upon the agitated sea […]2
  • An armoured portion of a warship, housing important equipment.
    • ✤ Twenty-two of these — eleven per broadside — were on the main deck within a central citadel, essentially an armor-protected box in the middle of the ship. Also within the citadel were four 110-pdr. breech-loaders.3
  • A Salvation Army meeting place.

Etymology

From French citadelle, from Italian cittadella, diminutive of città (“city”), from Latin cīvitās.

Pronunciation

  • IPA: /ˈsɪtədəl/, /ˈsɪtədɛl/
  • Audio (US): 🔊

Printed 2026-06-28.

(echo:: @ ⌗)

Footnotes

  1. 1906, Lord Dunsany [i.e., Edward Plunkett, 18th Baron of Dunsany], Time and the Gods ‎, London: William Heineman, →OCLC, page 1: ↩

  2. 1836, Alexander Slidell Mackenzie, The American in England, page 269: ↩

  3. 2000, Lincoln P. Paine, Warships of the World to 1900: ↩

Link to original

Secondary

• • •