MACHICOLATION/məˌtʃɪkəˈleɪʃn/

An opening between supports on a castle parapet for dropping missiles on an enemy.

When the world was younger, the principal defence against attackers was the castle, so effective before the age of gunnery that the only way to subdue it was to undermine its walls. To stop the enemy doing this, defenders evolved several techniques, one of which was to build out structures from the tops of the walls so that stones, boiling oil or other deterrents could be dropped on those below. At first these structures were of wood (called hoardings) but they were later reconstructed in stone, most commonly over the particularly vulnerable gatehouses but in some cases all along the walls. The word came from the Old French machicolor, a compound of Provençal macar, “crush”, and col, “neck”, a graphic description of the result of being bombarded with stones from on high while you were trying to dig.

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