Wednesday, January 18, 2017

Word of the day: enfilade

The word of the day is enfilade:

  1. Military.
    1. a position of works, troops, etc., making them subject to a sweeping fire from along the length of a line of troops, a trench, a battery, etc.
    2. the fire thus directed.
  2. Architecture.
    1. an axial arrangement of doorways connecting a suite of rooms with a vista down the whole length of the suite.
    2. an axial arrangement of mirrors on opposite sides of a room so as to give an effect of an infinitely long vista.
1706, from F. enfilade, from O.Fr. enfiler "to thread (a needle) on a string, pierce from end to end," from en- "put on" + fil "thread." Used of rows of apartments and lines of trees before modern military sense came to predominate.

(http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/enfilade)

Like that train we took to Ostia Antica.


"Instead, Sevigny has gone for a purer form of fun: an enfilade of domed caverns where dancers away to rock and disco hits flanked by tiled nooks from which clusters of beautiful folk watch the whorling crowd."

 - Nicolas Niarchos, "Bar Tab", 16 January 2017 The New Yorker (http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/01/16/well-heeled-ebullience-at-pauls-casablanca)

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