Word of the Week 03/22/20: Bastion

From Dictionary.com:

1. Fortification. a projecting portion of a rampart or fortification that forms an irregular pentagon attached at the base to the main work.
2. a fortified place.
3. anything seen as preserving or protecting some quality, condition, etc
4. a place or system in which something (such as an old-fashioned idea) continues to survive

From Collins Dictionary:

If a system or organization is described as a bastion of a particular way of life, it is seen as being important and effective in defending that way of life. Bastion can be used both when you think that this way of life should be ended and when you think it should be defended.

From Merriam-Webster:

Bastion is constructed of etymological building blocks that are very similar to those of "bastille" (a word now used as a general term for a prison, but best known as the name of the Parisian fortress-turned-prison stormed by an angry mob at the start of the French Revolution). The history of "bastion" can be traced through Middle French to the Italian bastione, from bastia "small quadrangular fortress" (from an Upper Italian counterpart to Tuscan bastita, from feminine past participle of bastire "to build," probably borrowed from Old Occitan bastir "to weave, build," "Bastir" and "bastire" are themselves of Germanic origin and akin to the Old High German word besten, meaning "to patch."