bastille
Part of speech: noun
verb
Morphological type: simple
Topics: government
military
politics
war
Etymology: The noun is derived from Middle English bastile, bastel (“fortification for attack mounted on a barge or wheels; projecting part of a fortification, bastion, turret; fortified encampment of a besieging army; structure carrying armed men on an elephant’s back; (figuratively) refuge, shelter; protector”) [and other forms], from Anglo-Norman bastile, bastille, Middle French bastille, and Old French baastel, basstel (“fortification; fortified tower; temporary fortification constructed for attack or defence; (small) castle or fortress”) (modern French bastille; compare Medieval Latin bastīle), from bastide (“fortification; fortress”) with the ending modified after nouns ending in -ille (from Latin -īle (suffix forming place names)). Bastide is derived from Old Occitan bastida (“fortification; (Provence) country mansion”), from bastir (“to build, construct”) + -ida (suffix forming nouns); while bastir is from *bastīre, from Frankish *bastijan (“to sew; to weave”), from Proto-West Germanic *bast (“fibre; rope”); further etymology uncertain, perhaps from Proto-Indo-European *bʰask- ~ *bʰasḱ- (“bundle, heap, load”) but this is disputed.
Compare typologically Russian опло́т (oplót), плете́нь (pleténʹ) (akin to плести́ (plestí)).
Noun sense 2.1 (“jail or prison, especially one regarded as mistreating its prisoners”) is from the Bastille in Paris, France. Known in full as the Bastille Saint-Antoine, it was a former fortress used as a prison by the French monarchy in the 17th and 18th centuries. The Bastille was stormed by a crowd on 14 July 1789 at the start of the French Revolution and later demolished, becoming an important symbol for the French Republican movement.
Noun sense 2.2 (“workhouse”) was possibly popularized by the English politician William Cobbett (1763–1835) who opposed the Poor Law Amendment Act 1834 (4 & 5 William IV, chapter 76; often called the “New Poor Law”). This Act made relief or welfare for poor people only available through workhouses, and ensured that the working conditions were harsh so that only the truly destitute would apply for relief.
The verb is derived from the noun.
Cognates
Late Latin bastile (“wooden siege tower”), bastilla, bastillia, bastillus, bastellum (“fortification; wooden siege tower”)
Inflected forms:
form: bastilles
pos: noun
tags: plural
form: bastile
pos: noun
tags: alternative
form: bastilles
pos: verb
tags: present
singular
third-person
form: bastilling
pos: verb
tags: participle
present
form: bastilled
pos: verb
tags: participle
past
form: bastilled
pos: verb
tags: past
form: bastile
pos: verb
tags: alternative
Senses:
gloss: Chiefly in French contexts: a bastion (“projecting part of a rampart or other fortification”) or tower of a castle; also, a fortified tower or other building; or a small citadel or fortress.
pos: noun
examples: H' incounters Talgol, routs the Bear, / And takes the Fidler Prisoner; / Conveys him to enchanted Castle, / There shuts him fast in wooden Bastile.
gloss: A jail or prison, especially one regarded as mistreating its prisoners.
pos: noun
tags: figuratively
examples: Thither arriv'd th' advent'rous Knight / And bold Squire from their Steeds alight, / At th' outward Wall, near which [there] stands / A Bastile built t'imprison hands; / By strange enchantment made to fetter / The lesser parts, and free the greater. / For though the Body may creep through, / The Hands in Grate are fast enough.
―The devil it is! ſaid I—but I vvill go to ten thouſand Baſtiles firſt— […]
But Nigel was somewhat immured within the Bastile of his rank, as some philosopher, (Tom Paine, we think,) has happily enough expressed that sort of shyness which men of dignified situations are apt to be beset with, […]
Whithersoever you choose; but by what means of conveyance[?] […] Shall it be the Great Northern, hard by Battle Bridge and Pentonville's frowning bastille?
gloss: Synonym of workhouse (“an institution for homeless poor people funded by the local parish, where the able-bodied were required to work”).
pos: noun
tags: UK
derogatory
figuratively
gloss: The fortified encampment of an army besieging a place; also, any of the buildings in such an encampment.
pos: noun
tags: historical
examples: VVhen they ſhould have ſtood to it in field, and fought, then they fled back to their tends: vvhen they vvere to guard and defend their trench and rampart, they ſurrendered them to the enemy: good no vvhere, neither in battel nor in baſtil.
gloss: To confine (someone or something) in, or as if in, a bastille (noun sense 2.1) or prison; to imprison.
pos: verb
tags: also
figuratively
transitive
examples: Inſtead of forging Chains for Foreigners, / Baſtile thy Tutor: Grandeur All thy Aim?
[W]hy if you don't ſcamper, you'll be baſtil'd, before you can ſay, "Killarney."
Behold them Bastilling the mildest and most indulgent monarch that ever sat upon their throne; […]
Marriage had baſtilled me for life.
Eh bien! there is another one who is beloved by one of your daughters, which did not prevent you from Bastilling him with a vengeance.
"Ideas cannot be Bastilled. They pierce walls, vaults—" / "No phrases, my dear fellow: that does very well for the public, otherwise the fools. Ideas are very easily Bastilled, as you call it."
All the doleful stories of prisoners of earlier or later ages, in the Bastile, including much sentimental balderdash, are drawled out by a very stupid and would-be effective writer, for the purpose of proving that the imprisonment of political offenders and captives by the North is precisely on a par with that of ‘Bastiling’ them, and that Abraham Lincoln is only a revival of the worst kings of France in an American form.
I know that peaceable and unoffending citizens of my own State have been "bastiled" in different parts of the United States—"cut off from their family, their friends, and their every connection."
For a lampoon on the Regent [Philippe II, Duke of Orléans] he [Voltaire] had been bastilled. For a fight with Rohan [Guy Auguste de Rohan-Chabot] he had been bastilled again. In prison he had changed his name and dreamt of liberty.
Although people equated going into a workhouse with being "bastilled," this was not the sure result of asking a relieving officer for help. Before the 1870s, most London paupers received cash or bread weekly according to local officials' scale of what constituted fair or equitable relief.
Related words: Bastille
Bastille Day
bastion
Derived words: bastle
bastle house
Translations: