| 释义 |
casemate|ˈkeɪsˌmeɪt|
Forms: 6–7 casamat(t, casamate, (6 cassamate, 7 casemat, cazimate), 6– casemate.
[The actual form is a. F. casemate (in 16th c. also chasmate, casmate, -matte); the earlier forms were ad. Sp. casamata, It. casamatta. Of these the first element is app. Sp. and It. casa house, but the second is uncertain. Diez mentions It. matta in dial. sense ‘pseudo-’, also Sicilian matta dark. Wedgwood, comparing the Eng. equivalent ‘slaughter-house’, suggests Sp. matar ‘to kill, slaughter’, but it is difficult on this theory to account for the form of the word.]
1. a. Fortif. A vaulted chamber built in the thickness of the ramparts of a fortress, with embrasures for the defence of the place; ‘a bomb-proof vault, generally under the ramparts of a fortress, used as a barrack, or a battery, or for both purposes’ (Stocqueler 1853). †b. An embrasure (obs.).
The original sense is thus given by Barret Theor. Warres (1598) Gloss.: ‘Casamatta, a Spanish word, doth signifie a slaughter-house, and is a place built low vnder the wall or bulwarke, not arriuing vnto the height of the ditch, seruing to scowre the ditch, annoying the enemy when he entreth into the ditch to skale the wall.’ The Sp. and It. is explained in the same words by Percivall and Florio; the latter adds as an English equivalent canonrie, i.e. cannonery, loop-hole, embrasure.
1575Gascoigne in Turberv. Venerie Pref. A iv, Plotformes, Loopes and Casamats, deuised by warlike men. 1589P. Ive Fortif. 26 Casemate..any..edifice that may be made in the ditch to defend the ditch by. 1591Garrard Art Warre 160 As curtaines or bulwarkes with their casamates do flancke a fortresse. 1600J. Dymmok Ireland (1843) 38 Their correspondency hindered by the cassamates in the ditch. 1620Dekker Dreame (1860) 12 Forts, gabions, palizadoes, cazimates. 1647–8Sir C. Cotterell Davila's Hist. Fr. (1678) 527 Raising new Forts, and making new Casamats. 1656Blount Glossogr., Casemate. 1790Beatson Nav. & Mil. Mem. App. 138 The fort has good casemates. 1859F. Griffiths Artil. Man. (1862) 248 Casemates, or vaulted batteries, are made bomb-proof. 1877W. Thomson Cruise Challenger i. 19 Galleries in the solid rock, forming a kind of casemate.
†c. fig. ? Batteries.
1635Heywood Hierarch. vii. 441 Of Thunder, Tempest, Meteors, Lightning, Snow, Chasemates, Trajections, of Haile, Raine.
d. Naut. An armoured enclosure for guns in a warship.
1888Engineering 17 Feb. 159/2 Italian Ironclad ‘Italia’... The barbettes are contained in an armoured casemate, which is supported by the unarmoured structure of the ship. 1899Daily News 21 July 10/4 Twelve out of the sixteen 6-inch guns are in casemates, a term borrowed, I fancy, from the land gunner. It is a neat little apartment, containing one gun, with the hoist from the magazine into it, and all complete.
2. Arch. ‘A hollow moulding, such as the cavetto’ (Gwilt); = casement 1.
1611Cotgr., Nasselle..a hollow in a piller, etc., called, a Casemate.
Hence ˈcasemated a., provided with casemates; transf. strongly fortified.
1751Smollett Per. Pic. xvii, Casemated as he was, the instrument cut sheer even to the bone [of his skull]. 1851Ord. & Regul. R. Eng. iv. 18 Casemated Barracks, and Hospitals. 1870Daily News 5 Oct., A perpendicular rock, like Gibraltar, 200 feet high, casemated, and nearly impregnable. |