embrasure

Noun

embrasure (plural embrasures)

1. Any of the indentations between the merlons of a battlement; an opening in a wall or parapet through which ordnance can be fired.
   • Near-synonym: crenel (sometimes hyponymous technically)
   • But there were less casualties than might have been expected, and the barricade rose steadily, a wall of concrete two feet thick, with embrasures for two machine-guns and a small field gun.1938 April, George Orwell [pseudonym; Eric Arthur Blair], chapter VI, in Homage to Catalonia, London: Secker & Warburg, →OCLC

   Synonyms:

   crenel[Appendix:Glossary

2. (figuratively) Any small protected space.
   • She had a special seat there, a little embrasure between two upright slabs of sandstone, which was sheltered and private.1938, Norman Lindsay, Age of Consent, 1st Australian edition, Sydney, N.S.W.: Ure Smith, published 1962, →OCLC, page 128
3. The slanting indentation in a wall for a door or window, such that the space is larger on the inside than the outside.
   • When the fit had spent itself he walked weakly to the window and, lifting the sash, sat in a corner of the embrasure and leaned his elbow upon the sill.1916, James Joyce, chapter 3, in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
   • Now he stands in a window embrasure, Liz's prayer book in hand.2009, Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall, Fourth Estate, published 2010, page 155
4. (obsolete) An embrace.
   • And suddenly; where injury of chance / Puts back leave-taking, justles roughly by / All time of pause, rudely beguiles our lips / Of all rejoindure, forcibly prevents / Our lock'd embrasures, strangles our dear vows / Even in the birth of our own labouring breath:c. 1602 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Troylus and Cressida”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and...