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''turret'' ▫ᴱᴺ|Definition|1st|20260213210640-00-⌔

turret - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

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Noun

turret (plural turrets)

  • (architecture) A little tower, frequently a merely ornamental structure at one of the corners of a building or castle.
    • ✤ Hyponyms: ridge turret, roof turret
    • Their Victorian house had three turrets and a large amount of gingerbread trim.
    • There breathes no being but has some pretence/To that fine instinct called poetic sense; […]/The freeman, casting with unpurchased hand/The vote that shakes the turrets of the land.1
    • Awake! for Morning in the Bowl of Night,
      Has flung the Stone that puts the Stars to Flight:
      And Lo! the Hunter of the East has caught
      The Sultán’s Turret in a Noose of light.
      2
  • (historical, military) A siege tower; a movable building, of a square form, consisting of ten or even twenty stories and sometimes one hundred and twenty cubits high, usually moved on wheels, and employed in approaching a fortified place, for carrying soldiers, engines, ladders, casting bridges, and other necessaries.
  • (electronics) A tower-like solder post on a turret board (a circuit board with posts instead of holes).
  • (military) An armoured, rotating gun installation on a fort, ship, aircraft, or armoured fighting vehicle.
  • (rail transport) The elevated central portion of the roof of a passenger car, with sides that are pierced for light and ventilation.
  • (machining, manufacturing) A turret head.
  • (gambling) The central conical ornament atop a spinning roulette wheel.

Etymology

From Middle English touret, from Old French torete (French tourette), diminutive of tour (“tower”), from Latin turris. Doublet of tor, tourelle, and tower. See tower.

Pronunciation

  • (Received Pronunciation, US without the hurryfurry merger) enPR: tŭr’ĭt, IPA: /ˈtʌɹɪt/
    • Audio (Southern England): 🔊
  • (Northern England) IPA: /ˈtʊɹɪt/
  • (US, hurryfurry merger) IPA: /ˈtɝ.ɪt/
    • Audio (non native living in the US): 🔊
  • (Scotland, Wales) IPA: /ˈtʌɾɪt/
  • Rhymes: -ʌɹɪt

Printed 2026-06-28.

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Footnotes

  1. 1836, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., “Poetry: A Metrical Essay”, republished in The Poems of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Boston, Mass.: Ticknor and Fields, 1862, OCLC 5091562, pages 7–8:

  2. 1859, Edward Fitzgerald, The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám: The Astronomer-Poet of Persia, page 1:

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