encampments

Noun

encampment (countable and uncountable, plural encampments)

1. (often) A place where people (such as displaced people, soldiers, or travellers) encamp, that is, stay in tents or other temporary structures; a camp or campsite.
   • As ſoon as he came to the top of thoſe Hills he plainly diſcovered the Creek or Harbour vvhere the Pyrate Ships lay, and vvhere they had form'd their Encampment on the Shore.1725, [Daniel Defoe], “Part I”, in A New Voyage Round the World, by a Course Never Sailed before. […], London: […] A[rthur] Bettesworth, […]; and W. Mears, […], →OCLC, page 69
2. (figuratively) A place where people or things stay temporarily.
   • This was an ancient lobster's house, / A lobster of prodigious nous, / So old that barnacles had spread / Their white encampments o'er its head,— […]1853 November, James Russell Lowell, “A Moosehead Journal: Addressed to the Edelmann Storg at the Bagni di Lucca”, in Fireside Travels, Boston, Mass.: Ticknor and Fields, published 1864, →OCLC, page...
3. (broadly) An enclosed or fortified prehistoric site, especially a European Iron Age hill-fort.
4. (broadly) A meeting (especially an annual meeting or important conference) of an outdoorsy group of people, such as military veterans or scouts of the scouting movement.
5. (broadly, obsolete) A meeting of Freemasons.
6. (uncountable) The act of encamping or setting up a camp; also, the state of being encamped or in a camp.
   • Mars Triumphant; or London's Glory: Being the whole art of encampment, with the method of embattling armies, marching them off, posting the officers, forming hollow squares, and the various ways of paying the salute with the half-pike; […]1709 September 6 (Gregorian calendar), Isaac Bickerstaff [et al., pseudonyms; Richard Steele], “Friday, August 27, 1709”, in The Tatler, number 60; republished in [Richard Steele], editor, The...

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