Word.ws English Dictionary

barbican

/ˈbɑːbɪkən/US/ˈbɑɹbɪkən/

barbican noun: a tower at the entrance to a castle or fortified town.

Noun

barbican (plural barbicans)

  1. A tower at the entrance to a castle or fortified town.
    • Near-synonym: guardhouse
    • The stone part of the drawbridge with its barbican and the bartizans of the gatehouse are in good repair. […] There was a large hidden trapdoor in the floor of the barbican, which would let them into the moat after all.1958, T[erence] H[anbury] White, chapter V, in The Once and Future King, New York, N.Y.: G. P. Putnam's Sons, →ISBN, book I (The Sword in the Stone)
    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.

Proper noun capitalized: Barbican

Barbican

  1. A neighbourhood in Plymouth, Devon, England (OS grid ref SX4854).
  2. A neighbourhood and residential estate in the City of London, Greater London, England (OS grid ref TQ3281)

Synonyms of barbican

All synonyms of barbican

Forms of barbican

pluralbarbicans
alternative formbarbacan

Origin of barbican

From Old French barbacane, of uncertain origin: compare Arabic بَرْبَخ (barbaḵ, “aqueduct, sewer”), and Persian بابخانه (bâb-xâne, “gatehouse”).

Words formed from barbican

Questions about barbican

What does barbican mean?
Barbican means a tower at the entrance to a castle or fortified town.
What part of speech is barbican?
Barbican can be a noun or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce barbican?
Barbican is pronounced /ˈbɑːbɪkən/ (UK).
What is the plural of barbican?
The plural of barbican is barbicans.

Words near barbican in the dictionary

  1. barbettes
  2. barbexaclone
  3. Barbey
  4. Barbian
  5. Barbians
  6. barbican
  7. barbicanage
  8. barbicaned
  9. barbicans
  10. barbicel
  11. barbicels

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: barbican (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.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-barbican.wav.

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