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OneKitly

citadel

nounattested in dialogue

  • //ˈsɪtədəl//
  • //ˈsɪtədɛl//

A strong fortress that sits high above a city.

noun

  1. 1

    A strong fortress that sits high above a city.

    In the city’s midst the gleaming marble of a thousand steps climbed to the citadel where arose four pinnacles beckoning to heaven, and midmost between the pinnacles there stood the dome, vast, as the gods had dreamed it.

  2. 2

    figurativeA stronghold or fortified place.

    Intrenched within the citadel of our apartment, and cheered by the comfortings of a coal fire, we passed the day in letter-writing, conversation, or gazing from the sheltered security of our windows upon the agitated sea[…]

  3. 3

    An armoured portion of a warship, housing important equipment.

    Twenty-two of these — eleven per broadside — were on the main deck within a central citadel, essentially an armor-protected box in the middle of the ship. Also within the citadel were four 110-pdr. breech-loaders.

  4. 4

    A Salvation Army meeting place.

Etymology

From French citadelle, from Italian cittadella, diminutive of città (“city”), from Latin cīvitās.

Forms

plural
citadels
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).