What's the difference between bastion and fortress?

Bastion


Definition:

  • (n.) A work projecting outward from the main inclosure of a fortification, consisting of two faces and two flanks, and so constructed that it is able to defend by a flanking fire the adjacent curtain, or wall which extends from one bastion to another. Two adjacent bastions are connected by the curtain, which joins the flank of one with the adjacent flank of the other. The distance between the flanks of a bastion is called the gorge. A lunette is a detached bastion. See Ravelin.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Squadron Leader Kevin Harris, commander of the Merlins at Camp Bastion, the main British base in Helmand, praised the crews, adding: "The Merlins will undergo an extensive programme of maintenance and cleaning before being packed up, ensuring they return to the UK in good order."
  • (2) Two other men were shot dead over the weekend, prompting the governing African National Congress (ANC) to warn that Marikana "cannot be allowed to deteriorate into a bastion of lawlessness".
  • (3) Teachers’ unions such as the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers successfully amplified their anger, signaling their role among the most powerful bastions of organized labor in the country.
  • (4) Here are three things you can do: • Use the corporation's online complaints form • Take the issue to the BBC Trust • Complain to Feedback on Radio 4 Otherwise, expect our bastion of editorial values to keep collaborating in the time-honoured tradition of hoaxing us on behalf of corporate money.
  • (5) "As a council we enjoyed great success with Jimi and HESCO Bastion working together with them to achieve a historic gold medal for the city at this year's RHS Chelsea Flower Show, and everyone who knew him will remember his quiet manner, good nature, and tremendous pride in being from Leeds.
  • (6) Latin America remains a bastion of draconian anti-abortion legislation, where the termination of a pregnancy is almost universally considered a criminal act.
  • (7) After almost 70 years as a bastion of the Italian left, its city council has passed into the hands of the anti-establishment Five Star Movement (M5S), whose mayoral candidate beat the centre-left's challenger in a runoff.
  • (8) "Today's nationalist focus is all about defending the sense – and to some extent the reality – that Scotland is the last bastion of the 1945 welfare state nation," my colleague Martin Kettle says in the Guardian today.
  • (9) This looks to us like a barefaced attempt to shut down an organisation which has been a bastion for human rights and a thorn in the side of the authorities for more than 20 years.” Five years after police brutality sparked the revolution that toppled longtime dictator Hosni Mubarak, human rights groups are again denouncing deaths in police stations, arbitrary arrests and the disappearances of opponents of the regime.
  • (10) The city, one of the largest Kurdish bastions of resistance to Isis in northern Syria, was shaken by heavy shelling from the advancing militants at dusk on Friday, sending plumes of smoke skywards and more refugees scrambling across the border into Turkey .
  • (11) Meanwhile the Tuareg rebels in the National Movement for the Liberation of the Azawad (NMLA) are preparing for their "final push" on the last bastions of Malian power in the northern deserts.
  • (12) There aren't any pavements at Bastion, or street lights, so walking around at night can be perilous without a torch.
  • (13) James Schneider, editorial director of New African magazine, who was analysing the results as they came in, tweeted: “The story of the night is #Buhari getting his vote out in his areas and #Jonathan not doing so enough.” The commercial capital, Lagos, and some of Jonathan’s bastions in the largely Christian south, including the oil-rich Niger delta, are yet to declare, and a final result is not expected until Tuesday.
  • (14) Aside from history enthusiasts and couples seeking privacy from the crowded city, few enter the red sandstone gate between the fort’s stout bastions.
  • (15) "Jimi Heselden, 62, was Chairman of Hesco Bastion Ltd, the world-leading manufacturer of protective barriers used to protect British and coalition troops around the world.
  • (16) Financial markets are not free – they're one of the last bastions of socialism Read more The benefits cap and the bedroom tax drive the poor out of their homes .
  • (17) "The countryside is the last bastion for the native Britons of these islands.
  • (18) Last week a couple of hundred people attempted to push back against such noxious narratives by protesting outside Islamabad’s Red Mosque, a bastion of Taliban sympathisers that could not bring itself to unequivocally condemn the Peshawar attacks.
  • (19) Bastion has been the centre of British operations in the country since UK troops were sent to Helmand in 2006.
  • (20) In the north, the bastion of Mosul, which is central to Isis’s fate, now seems less formidable after a peshmerga push from the east.

Fortress


Definition:

  • (n.) A fortified place; a large and permanent fortification, sometimes including a town; a fort; a castle; a stronghold; a place of defense or security.
  • (v. t.) To furnish with a fortress or with fortresses; to guard; to fortify.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) The nuptials drew crowds of fans eager to witness the glitzy event, but they were kept far away from the heavily walled 16th-century fortress, which offers stunning views of Florence and surrounding Tuscan hills.
  • (2) In one way they were right to state the obvious – because Celtic were utter plod at the back – but hubris is best not displayed until you are beyond the reach of vengeance, as opposed to being about to walk into the fortress of the foe you have just mocked.
  • (3) Captain America kicking open the door of what looks like a European mountain fortress suggests the Nazi offshoot Hydra might be rearing its many ugly heads once again.
  • (4) After a stirring speech urging the ushering in of a new era of politics delivered to a packed convention hall in the Ghanaian capital Accra, Obama and his family toured the white-walled slave fortress to the sound of beating drums and chanting from a huge crowd outside.
  • (5) The fortress-like villages perched on rocky mountaintops we saw when we visited the north of the country are reminders that Yemen has constantly been invaded, or otherwise meddled with, by outsiders, from the Turks onwards.
  • (6) "Now we know our fortresses are secure," says their president, Tim Farron, a smirk of triumph in his voice, "we can collect 25 or 30 more Tory seats."
  • (7) Arab Iraq may still try to retake the province, but it is too focused on turning Baghdad and the Shia south into a fortress.
  • (8) However, much as MI6 hides in plain sight in their huge postmodernist fortress on the south bank of the Thames, at least one BAE building is very visible indeed.
  • (9) The original fortress was built in the 13th century but was raised to the ground by clashing clans and today is largely a 20th-century Grand Designs-style restoration thanks to Lieutenant Colonel John MacRae-Gilstrap, who bought the ruin in 1911.
  • (10) Founded in 1088, the monastery’s fortress-like walls dominate the island’s skyline.
  • (11) So when Bill Gates pitched into the debate last week with a proposal that robots should be taxed , just like human workers are, you can imagine the splutters of outrage from the neoliberal fortresses of Silicon Valley.
  • (12) It's like a giant fortress in the middle of the city, taking up more than a traditional housing block (a whole street was annihilated for it).
  • (13) Canada has budgeted more than C$1bn (£644m) for security for the two summits, leading to accusations from activists that Toronto had been turned into a fortress.
  • (14) I further call on the international community to do everything in its power to protect the affected civilian population and safeguard the unique cultural heritage of Palmyra.” However, Isis has often cherished its destruction of cultural artefacts, releasing long, well-produced videos of their destruction of objects in the Mosul Museum and their detonation and bulldozing of much of the ancient fortress city of Hatra in Iraq.
  • (15) So the Super Fortresses were stripped to fly at 32,000 feet.
  • (16) The bank has repeatedly made it clear that a big loss – even of $6.2bn – cannot take down a bank with the size and strength of JP Morgan – a bank that has, in its own favorite phrase, "a fortress balance sheet".
  • (17) A sensationalist and scruple-free press seems eager to collude in their “noble lie”: that a Middle Eastern militia, thriving on the utter ineptitude of its local adversaries, poses an “existential risk” to an island fortress that saw off Napoleon and Hitler .
  • (18) In an interview with Fox News last Sunday , Trump accused Beijing of “building a massive fortress in the middle of the South China Sea, which they shouldn’t be doing”.
  • (19) Some 35% of Labour supporters voted yes on 18 September and three of the party’s traditional fortresses – Glasgow, North Lanarkshire and Dundee – were among the four local authorities out of 32 to back independence.
  • (20) Dun Totaig Distance 4 miles Start Letterfearn, Grid Ref: NG884238 Further information and maps Eilean Donan castle ( eileandonancastle.com )is one of the Highlands', indeed Scotland's, most iconic landmarks – a picture-perfect stone fortress surrounded by water (and often thronging with visitors).