enfilade meaning: definition, etymology and quotations

enfilade

noun

UK /ˌɛnfəlˈeɪd/ · US /ˈɛnfəlˌeɪd/

Etymology Borrowed from French enfilade.

A line or straight passage, or the position of that which lies in a straight line.

In his Booker Prize-winning novel The Line of Beauty, Alan Hollinghurst wrote about people who know their world history as being able to look back through the millennia as an enfilade of rooms: Greece yields to Rome; Rome to the Byzantine Empire ... the Renaissance ... the British Empire ... America ... China. The same goes for people who can recite their kings and queens. British history clicks into a long enfilade of discrete, identifiable periods.2015 January 4, Harry Mount, “Kings and queens – any other approach to history is boring [print version: Game of thrones, 3 January 2015, p. R22]”, in The Daily Telegraph (Review):

Gunfire directed along the length of a target.

Uncle Charles, a truly unparalleled slinger of shit, is laying down an enfilade of same, trying to mollify men who seem way more in need of a good brow-mopping than I.1996, David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest […], Boston, Mass.; New York, N.Y.: Little, Brown and Company, →ISBN, page 13:
In minutes they had gained the top, fell prone, and began to pour deadly repeater-fire into the enemy below while their compatriots raked the top of the coulee with an enfilade.1996, Guy Vanderhaeghe, chapter 27, in The Englishman’s Boy, New York: Anchor, page 266:

Architecture A series of doors that provide a vista when open.

verb

Etymology Borrowed from French enfilade.

To rake (something) with gunfire.

A great quantity of artillery was placed upon the eminence, so as to batter and enfilade the left of their intrenchments.1765, John Wright, chapter 7, in The Compleat History of the Late War, volume 1, London: David Steel, page 202:
As they scrambled up a narrow path they every where found holes dug to cover the defenders of the mountain, and sticks crossed for resting their guns, with which they enfiladed every angle, that from the steepness it was necessary to make in ascending.1803, Robert Charles Dallas, The History of the Maroons, London: Longman and Rees, Volume 1, Letter 3, p. 72:

2 more examples

It was by his order the shattered leading company flung itself into the houses when the Sin Verguenza were met by an enfilading volley as they reeled into the calle.1907 January, Harold Bindloss, chapter 30, in The Dust of Conflict, 1st Canadian edition, Toronto, Ont.: McLeod & Allen, →OCLC:
He killed the machine gun crew, and without further orders pushed on and enfiladed a ditch from which three officers and 160 men subsequently surrendered.2019 November 20, “Service honours railwaymen who fought and died in WW1”, in Rail, page 66:

Figuratively To be directed toward (something) like enfilading gunfire.

Together they saw the market thicken, and in course of time thin away with the slow decline of the sun towards the upper end of town, its rays taking the street endways and enfilading the long thoroughfare from top to bottom.1886, Thomas Hardy, chapter 24, in The Mayor of Casterbridge:
From her rocking chair in the parlour, Mrs. Zell’s scrutiny enfiladed the entire block.1921, Henry G. Aikman, Zell, London: Jonathan Cape, Part 1, Chapter 1, p. 15:

Architecture To arrange (rooms or other structures) in a row.

[…] the house had been boldly planned with a ball-room, so that, instead of squeezing through a narrow passage to get to it (as at the Chiverses’) one marched solemnly down a vista of enfiladed drawing-rooms (the sea-green, the crimson and the bouton d’or), seeing from afar the many-candled lustres reflected in the polished parquetry […]1920, Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence, Book 1, Chapter 3: