turret

Etymology

From Middle English touret, from Old French torete (French tourette), diminutive of tour (“tower”), from Latin turris. Doublet of tor, tourelle, and tower. See tower.

English Wikipedia has an article on:

turret

Wikipedia

Pronunciation

• (UK, US) enPR: tŭr'ĭt, IPA^(key): /ˈtʌɹ.ɪt/, /ˈtʊɹ.ɪt/

  • Audio (Southern England):

    (file)

• (US) IPA^(key): /ˈtɝ.ɪt/ (accents with the "Hurry-furry" merger)

  • Audio (non native living in the US):

    (file)

• Rhymes: -ʌɹɪt

Noun

turret (plural turrets)

1. (architecture) A little tower, frequently a merely ornamental structure at one of the corners of a building or castle.
   • 1836, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., “Poetry: A Metrical Essay”, republished in The Poems of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Boston, Mass.: Ticknor and Fields, 1862, OCLC 5091562, pages 7–8:

     There breathes no being but has some pretence / To that fine instinct called poetic sense; […] / The freeman, casting with unpurchased hand / The vote that shakes the turrets of the land.

   • 1859, Edward Fitzgerald, The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám: The Astronomer-Poet of Persia, page 1:

     Awake! for Morning in the Bowl of Night,
     Has flung the Stone that puts the Stars to Flight:
     And Lo! the Hunter of the East has caught
     The Sultán's Turret in a Noose of light.

2. (historical, military) A siege tower; a movable building, of a square form, consisting of ten or even twenty stories and sometimes one hundred and twenty cubits high, usually moved on wheels, and employed in approaching a fortified place, for carrying soldiers, engines, ladders, casting bridges, and other necessaries.
3. (electronics) A tower-like solder post on a turret board (a circuit board with posts instead of holes).
4. (military) An armoured, rotating gun installation on a fort, ship, aircraft, or armoured fighting vehicle.
5. (rail transport) The elevated central portion of the roof of a passenger car, with sides that are pierced for light and ventilation.

Anagrams

• Rutter, rutter