a term given to a parapet of a wall, in which portions have been cut out at intervals to allow the discharge of arrows or other missiles; these cut-out portions are known as "crenels"; the solid widths between the "crenels" are, called "merlons."
Nothing to do but hitch your rope ladder to the battlements, shin down it, break your leg in the moat—because a rope ladder is nineteen foot too short, you know—and there's your horses and your trusty vassles, and they scoop you up and fling you across a saddle, and away you go to your native Langudoc, or Navarre, or wherever it is.
Mark Twain. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
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a gentleman’s manor-house, not a nobleman’s seat: battlements round the top gave it a picturesque look.
Charlotte Brontë. Jane Eyre (1847)
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I devoted the next ensuing Sunday afternoon to a pilgrimage to the Castle. On arriving before the battlements, I found the Union Jack flying and the drawbridge up;
Charles Dickens. Great Expectations (1861)
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hummocks upon the broad surface of the fields, hardly visible, broken battlements over which, in their day, the bowmen had hurled down stones,
Marcel Proust. In Search of Lost Time [volume 1] Swann’s Way