noun

• A low temporary defense or parapet.

  ‘Up ahead were gentle country hills, picket fences - and what looked like breastworks and fortifications.’

  More example sentences

  • ‘‘Take it slow, guys,’ a sergeant of the Pennsylvanians called out as the troops approached the fortifications and breastworks.’
  • ‘A submachine-gunner delivers more accurate fire using the breastwork to steady his weapon.’
  • ‘The regiment gained the enemy's breastworks and the affair at Boykin's Mills was over.’
  • ‘He ordered soldiers to tear down breastworks and use the logs to feed the fires.’
  • ‘Militiamen dug in their heels behind meager breastworks and awaited the arrival of their adversaries.’
  • ‘The scouts barricaded themselves behind tree trunks and threw up breastworks of fallen trees.’
  • ‘Upon further inspection of the breastworks, I have come to the conclusion that the town was almost impregnable.’
  • ‘They worked to erect small semicircular breastworks from the many rocks that dotted the terrain.’
  • ‘The bombs exploded in the air and sailed into the breastworks, throwing up great clouds of dirt.’
  • ‘The cavalry horses were watered at the spring, and the men settled in their breastworks.’
  • ‘When the fighting died down, the Confederates hastily constructed breastworks to protect their gains.’
  • ‘Behind these natural breastworks, the company fired repeated volleys at the approaching horsemen.’
  • ‘From this cover, they swept the flats in front of their breastworks with withering gunfire.’
  • ‘Everything the actor owned formed a crude breastwork ten yards from the chipped cinder-block front step.’
  • ‘Yet I still felt muddled, as the breastwork became more defined in the clouds of smoke from the firing of muskets.’
  • ‘There was probably a timber breastwork along the top.’
  • ‘Russell sent his family to safety, then made a breastwork from a pile of shingles at his front door.’
  • ‘It threaded through the hills which surrounded the Empire's capital like a huge, natural breastwork.’