Word.ws English Dictionary

barbacan

barbacan is the archaic spelling of barbican.

Meaning of barbican

Noun

barbican (plural barbicans)

  1. A tower at the entrance to a castle or fortified town.
    • Near-synonym: guardhouse
    Synonyms:
    guardhouse
  2. A fortress at the end of a bridge.
  3. An opening in the wall of a fortress through which the guns are levelled; a narrow loophole through which arrows and other missiles may be shot.
    • Two shafts of soft daylight fell across the flagged floor from the high barbacans.1922 February 2, James Joyce, “[Episode 11]”, in Ulysses, Paris: Shakespeare and Company […], →OCLC
  4. A temporary wooden tower built for defensive purposes.

See all 6 meanings of barbican

Forms of barbacan

pluralbarbacans

Questions about barbacan

What is barbacan the archaic spelling of?
Barbacan is the archaic spelling of barbican.

Words near barbacan in the dictionary

  1. barb wire
  2. barb wires
  3. barb-wire
  4. barb-wires
  5. Barb.
  6. barbacan
  7. barbacans
  8. barback
  9. barbacked
  10. barbacking
  11. barbacks

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: barbacan (page history and authors); barbican (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “barbacan.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/barbacan. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.