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Jul 15, 2021
This week’s theme
Words coined after buildings and venues

This week’s words
tammany
Grand Guignol
chamber of horrors
bastille
Hawthorne effect

Bastille
The Bastille in the first days of its demolition
Art: Hubert Robert, 1789

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A.Word.A.Day
with Anu Garg

bastille

PRONUNCIATION:
(ba-STEEL)

MEANING:
noun: A prison.

ETYMOLOGY:
After Bastille, a fortress in Paris, that was used to hold prisoners. From Old French bastille (fortress), alteration of bastide, from Old Provençal bastir (to build). Earliest documented use: 1400.

NOTES:
Bastille (French pronunciation: bas-TEE-yuh) was built in the 14th century and stormed on Jul 14, 1789, marking the beginning of the revolution. The anniversary (Bastille Day) is celebrated as a national holiday in France.

USAGE:
“It sounded like the perfect solution: Simply ask the man in the bulletproof booth to switch the (carwash) machine off and allow me to escape from my bubbly bastille.”
Pat Craig; ‘Survivor: Carwash’; Honk If You’re Stuck; Contra Costa Times (California); Mar 29, 2004.

See more usage examples of bastille in Vocabulary.com’s dictionary.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
My ambition is to live to see all of physics reduced to a formula so elegant and simple that it will fit easily on the front of a T-shirt. -Leon Max Lederman, physicist, Nobel laureate (15 Jul 1922-2018) [He had to sell his Nobel medal to pay his medical bills.]

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