Forms: 6–7 casemat(t, casamate, (6 cassamate, 7 casemat, cazimate), 6– casemate. [The actual form is a. F. casemate (in 16th c. also chasmate, casmate, -matte); the earlier forms were ad. Sp. casamata, It. casamatta. Of these the first element is app. Sp. and It. casa house, but the second is uncertain. Diez mentions It. matta in dial. sense ‘pseudo-,’ also Sicilian matta dark. Wedgwood, comparing the Eng. equivalent ‘slaughter-house,’ suggests Sp. matar ‘to kill, slaughter,’ but it is difficult on this theory to account for the form of the word.]
1. Fortif. A vaulted chamber built in the thickness of the ramparts of a fortress, with embrasures for the defence of the place; ‘a bomb-proof vault, generally under the ramparts of a fortress, used as a barrack, or a battery, or for both purposes’ (Stocqueler, 1853). † b. An embrasure (obs.).
The original sense is thus given by Barret, Theor. Warres (1598), Gloss.: ‘Casamatta, a Spanish word, doth signifie a slaughter-house, and is a place built low vnder the wall or bulwarke, not arriuing vnto the height of the ditch, seruing to scowre the ditch, annoying the enemy when he entreth into the ditch to skale the wall.’ The Sp. and It. is explained in the same words by Percivall and Florio; the latter adds as an English equivalent canonrie, i.e., CANNONERY, loop-hole, embrasure.
1575. Gascoigne, in Turberv., Venerie, Pref. A iv. Plotformes, Loopes and Casamats, deuised by warlike men.
1589. Ive, Fortif., 26. Casemate … any … edifice that may be made in the ditch to defend the ditch by.
1591. Garrard, Art Warre, 160. As curtaines or bulwarkes with their casamates, do flancke a fortresse.
1600. Dymmok, Ireland (1843), 38. Their correspondency hindered by the cassamates in the ditch.
1620. Dekker, Dreame (1860), 12. Forts, gabions, palizadoes, cazimates.
1647–8. Cotterell, Davila’s Hist. Fr. (1678), 527. Raising new Forts, and making new Casamats.
1656. Blount, Glossogr., Casemate.
1790. Beatson, Nav. & Mil. Mem., App. 138. The fort has good casemates.
1859. F. A. Griffiths, Artil. Man. (1862), 248. Casemates, or vaulted batteries, are made bomb-proof.
1877. W. Thomson, Cruise Challenger, i. 19. Galleries in the solid rock, forming a kind of casemate.
† c. fig. ? Batteries.
1635. Heywood, Hierarch., VII. 441.
| Of Thunder, Tempest, Meteors, Lightning, Snow, | |
| Chasemates, Trajections, of Haile, Raine. |
2. Arch. ‘A hollow moulding, such as the cavetto’ (Gwilt); = CASEMENT 1.
1611. Cotgr., Nasselle … a hollow in a piller, &c., called, a Casemate.
Hence Casemated a., provided with casemates; transf. strongly fortified.
1751. Smollett, Per. Pic., xvii. Casemated as he was, the instrument cut sheer even to the bone [of his skull].
1851. Ord. & Regul. R. Eng., iv. 18. Casemated Barracks, and Hospitals.
1870. Daily News, 5 Oct., 3/1. The fort is a perpendicular rock, like Gibraltar, 200 feet high, casemated, and nearly impregnable.
