from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
- transitive v. To arrange (fortifications) in such a way as to give protection from enfilading and other fire.
- n. The act or procedure of defilading.
- n. A fortified position offering protection from enfilading and other fire.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
- v. To fortify something as a protection from enfilading fire.
- n. A fortification having such protection.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English
- transitive v. To raise, as a rampart, so as to shelter interior works commanded from some higher point.
from The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- In fortification, to arrange the plan and profile of (a fortification) so as to protect its lines from enfilading fire, and its interior from plunging or reverse fire. Also defile.
- n. That arrangement of a fortification by means of which its interior is concealed from an adversary on a neighboring height.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- n. the arrangement of defensive fortifications to protect against enemy fire
And, again, quite prominent pieces of terrain where you can have good what's called defilade fire but you have to be very careful about being isolated.
I backed my way across the river with rifle leveled and took up a defilade and waited ...
I will tell you now that I shot only once in my military career, and that in so doing I murdered the woolen hat of my sergeant which he had lost leaping into a nearby defilade.
Swagger started to rotate right, to get around the bumpers of both cars, flank the shooter, and take him down from the low defilade, even as he knew that if the guy was no idiot, he too would now be on the move, rotating also to the right.
Kitteh tank in defilade behine wall waitin for burdie squad to be lunches!
I've been setting up enfilade fire from defilade positions, with aspects of grazing/plunging speculative fire suppression all morning.
The tanks and infantry should not go together because the tanks will be slowed down and the artillery fire that will fall on the tanks would cause casualties, and the infantry may be able to approach the objective from a direction unsuitable for tanks to take advantage of defilade. 37
Drilling and parading was well and good, but column advance, feint, enfilade and defilade—lot of use was that against the British Empire.
I knew where most of the latter were placed, since the best sites for artillery always seemed to be identical with those I chose to put my clearing companies in -- i.e., back of a division, near water, and with defilade (a hill facing away from the enemy so that their artillery passed over us).
Natural or manmade defilade provides the best cover from kinetic-energy direct fire munitions.