Word.ws English Dictionary

bulwark

UK/ˈbʊl.wək//ˈbʊl.wɚk/

bulwark noun: a defensive wall or rampart.

Noun

bulwark (plural bulwarks)

  1. A defensive wall or rampart.
    • Let thouſands die, their ſlaughtered Carkaſſes
      Shal ſerue for walles and bulwarkes to the reſt: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...
  2. A defense or safeguard.
    • The royal navy of England hath ever been its greatest defence, […] the floating bulwark of the island.1765–1769, William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England, (please specify |book=I to IV), Oxford, Oxfordshire: […] Clarendon Press, →OCLC
  3. A breakwater.
  4. 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.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
  5. (figuratively) 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.2024 December 12, Eric Cortellessa, “Donald Trump 2024 TIME Person of the Year”, in Time, archived from the original on 22 Dec 2024

Verb

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

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

bulwark meaning in Tamil, Urdu, Bengali and Malayalam

bulwark in Tamil

அரணம், கொத்தளம், வல்லரண், வல்லரன், தடைச்சுவர், பாதுகாப்பு

bulwark in Urdu

فصیل

bulwark in Bengali

প্রতিরক্ষা প্রাচীর

bulwark in Malayalam

പ്രതിരോധഭിത്തി, പ്രതിരോധം നൽകുന്ന വ്യക്തിയോ, സ്ഥാപനമോ ആശയമോ
More languagesFewer languages
bulwark in Kannada
ಕೋಟೆಕೊತ್ತಳ, ಕೊತ್ತಳ, ಕೋಟೆಯ ಗೋಡೆ, ದುರ್ಗ
bulwark in Punjabi
ਕੰਧ kandh
bulwark in Tagalog
balwarte
bulwark in Arabic
حِصْن ḥiṣn
bulwark in Persian
بارو bâru, سنگر sangar

Examples of bulwark in a sentence

  • The party's staunchest stalwarts constitute the President's redoubtable bulwark against the latter bribery accusations.
  • “Fascists need to crush civil society orgs because they are a bulwark of liberalism.
  • The defensive bulwark seemed to have developed into a large crack – the threat of Ukrainian irredentism.

All 13 example sentences with bulwark

Forms of bulwark

Noun
pluralbulwarks
Verb
third-person singular presentbulwarks
present participlebulwarking
past participlebulwarked
pastbulwarked

Plural of bulwark: bulwarks

Origin of bulwark

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.

Questions about bulwark

What does bulwark mean?
Bulwark means a defensive wall or rampart.
What is bulwark in Tamil?
Bulwark in Tamil is அரணம், கொத்தளம், வல்லரண். See Bulwark meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is bulwark?
Bulwark can be a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce bulwark?
Bulwark is pronounced /ˈbʊl.wək/ (UK).
What is the plural of bulwark?
The plural of bulwark is bulwarks.

Words near bulwark in the dictionary

  1. Bulverizes
  2. Bulverizing
  3. Bulwang
  4. bulward
  5. bulwards
  6. bulwark
  7. bulwarked
  8. bulwarking
  9. bulwarks
  10. Bulwell
  11. Bulwell Forest

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: bulwark (page history and authors); bulwark (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); bulwark (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); Bulwark (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); bulwark (Malayalam Wiktionary) (page history and authors); bulwark (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors); ਕੰਧ (Punjabi) (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: en-us-bulwark.ogg.

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