![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
prettygoodwordrampire (RAM-pire) - n., (arch.) rampart. v., (arch.) to fortify with or form into a rampart.
Obsolete variant of rampart, but which unlike rampart was also verbed. Put on my list of pretty good words not because I expect anyone to use it, but because I'd run across it three or four times over a week of reading 17th and 18th century poetry. Like rampart, borrowed around 1580 from French, from remparer, from re-, again + emparer, to take possession of, from Provençal, amparar, from Latin ante-, before + parāre, to prepare.
---L.
Obsolete variant of rampart, but which unlike rampart was also verbed. Put on my list of pretty good words not because I expect anyone to use it, but because I'd run across it three or four times over a week of reading 17th and 18th century poetry. Like rampart, borrowed around 1580 from French, from remparer, from re-, again + emparer, to take possession of, from Provençal, amparar, from Latin ante-, before + parāre, to prepare.
---L.
