noun

• 1A small military camp or position at some distance from the main army, used especially as a guard against surprise attack.

  ‘troops in some outposts have surrendered’

  More example sentences

  • ‘After the attack on the outpost, he kept the battalion moving.’
  • ‘Another enemy attack captures an outpost on the approaches to Hill 1220.’
  • ‘Police said the guerrillas disarmed paramilitary troops manning the outpost after a brief fire-fight.’
  • ‘Unfortunately, when we look back over the Army's long history, that condition is not unusual-the bulk of our Army has served in distant outposts throughout most of its years.’
  • ‘The advance guard fought Spanish outposts at Las Guasimas, and the whole force made a spirited if awkward twin assault on the Spanish fortifications at Kettle and San Juan Hills and El Caney.’
  • ‘His forte was the cavalry raid, surprising outposts, sweeping down on garrisons, catching the enemy off guard.’
  • ‘The other entry ports are quaint outposts guarding back roads that cut across lush pasturelands and dairy farms from Canada.’
  • ‘Through a volatile century of international relations beginning in the 1870s, the coastal area of this land was a military outpost dedicated to the protection of the bay.’
  • ‘Only weeks after Lincoln's inauguration, the Confederacy consummated its break with the union by firing on Fort Sumter in South Carolina, one of the last federal military outposts in the South.’
  • ‘She also acted as a radar picket and re-supplied Army outposts and British Antarctic Scientists on South Georgia, 800 miles from the Falklands.’
  • ‘Other military outposts were constructed to the north.’
  • ‘Settlements are often on hills, for they provide the best location for military outposts.’
  • ‘To get this gun to the military outpost, we'll need to drive.’
  • ‘There had been nothing in the clearing, so I returned to the military outpost, already knowing what I would find there.’
  • ‘The blast occurred about 30 minutes ago near a military outpost and appeared to have come either from a car bomb or a tunnel.’
  • ‘In the north, they razed a military outpost to the ground.’
  • ‘Even at that time, there was a bit of unrest in the area, so an army outpost had been set up on the island with 14 soldiers and two of their wives.’
  • ‘The foursome decide to beat it out of London using Frank's taxi, in search of an army outpost broadcasting the lone radio signal.’
  • ‘Not bad for a city that started out as a military outpost of Auckland.’
  • ‘Plus, each base has its own set of resources, and so if you want to keep troops at an outpost or stronghold, you have to continually ferry food to them so they don't starve.’

  Synonyms

  territory, possession, holding, dependency, province, dominion, protectorate, satellite, satellite state, settlement, outpost

• 2A remote part of a country or empire.

  ‘a few scattered outposts along the west coast’

  More example sentences

  • ‘You do not need to be reminded that it is no longer an English organization with headquarters on the banks of the Thames and outposts scattered about the Empire on which the sun was said never to set.’
  • ‘Although the muscular Frenchman never fought ancient foes of the tricolour, the athletic Blanc peacefully presides over a diving operation at one of the remotest outposts of the French empire.’
  • ‘The countdown has begun to a celebration of York's past as a vital outpost of a multi-national empire, with the city's second annual Roman Festival.’
  • ‘Duff House, billed as Scotland's premier country house gallery, is one of only two regional outposts of the National Galleries, along with Paxton House in Berwick upon Tweed.’
  • ‘He is a product of the mass movement of subjects within the colonial outposts of the British Empire.’
  • ‘Wars will be stopped only when soldiers refuse to fight, when workers refuse to load weapons onto ships and aircraft, when people boycott the economic outposts of Empire that are strung across the globe.’
  • ‘Young Thomas delivers telegrams for a living in the ‘furthest outposts of the British Empire’ while dreaming of New York.’
  • ‘There is talk of a massive fall in profits and a slump in turnover - talk that some outposts of the empire were simply not performing well enough to survive.’
  • ‘The jockeys will charge the tape and bolt to the first fence anyway, and in far flung outposts of the old Empire and beyond, they'll tune in as well.’
  • ‘So naturally confidence was the order of the day in the empire's outposts.’
  • ‘The land he first visited in 1809-11 was a rugged outpost of the Ottoman Empire, which had ruled the Greeks since the fifteenth century.’
  • ‘In its heyday, Visegrad was a major outpost for the Roman Empire.’
  • ‘An outpost of the Inca empire, thought to have been inhabited by the Chachapoyas, has been discovered in Peru's Amazon jungle.’
  • ‘It has long been known that Eboracum was an important outpost of the Roman empire.’
  • ‘Once in the Arctic, the eight-man team will begin a thirty-day 300-mile ski trek to the Pole from Resolute Bay, a remote outpost off mainland Canada.’
  • ‘We have always said that our story is like the story of the frontier towns and the hinterland outposts.’
  • ‘The Scottish Office, after all, was never intended to do anything other than administer a regional outpost of central government.’
  • ‘In large part, this was done by converting the nodes representing imperial outposts across the empire into real places connected not only by telegraph cables but also by imaginary bridges.’
  • ‘Several British companies joined to form Imperial Airways in 1924 and the network for both mail and passenger transport was gradually extended beyond Europe to outposts of the empire in Africa and Asia.’
  • ‘During the eighteenth century, with the growth of the sugar industry the Spanish colonies became more than military and commercial outposts and began to prosper economically and socially.’

  Synonyms

  dependency, colony, protectorate, territory, province, outpost, satellite, satellite state

  1. 2.1An isolated or remote branch of something.
     ‘the community is the last outpost of civilization in the far north’
     More example sentences

     • ‘The island becomes an outpost of civilization in the midst of a strange culture.’
     • ‘The restaurant is an outpost of Arts and Crafts-style elegance.’
     • ‘They were outposts of Europe, transplanted bits of London or Manchester, or more recently of Athens or Rome.’
     • ‘Not sure if you know, but most of the food stalls in Quincy Market are outposts of real restaurants.’
     • ‘The mobile library will replace small outposts which had limited stock often in unsuitable locations.’