• enfilade •
Pronunciation: en-fi-layd • Hear it!
Part of Speech: Noun
Meaning: 1. A line of fire or bombardment that sweeps from one end to the other. 2. Rooms or apartments laid out in a line that open into each other, with doors positioned opposite each other.
Notes: The idea of a lineup comes from the French verb enfiler "to string on a thread". English enfilade may be used as a verb, too, in the senses of "shoot or bombard from end to end" or "build rooms end to end". Other than this, today's word is a lexical orphan. A defilade is a fortification that protects from enfilading and other fusillades.
In Play: Modern warfare has made the military sense of this word passe: "The machine guns swept the ground with fierce enfilade fire." It is still used in architecture: "The tsar's apartments in the Winter and Summer Palaces were arranged as an enfilade."
Word History: Today's Good Word was originally French enfilade "row, line, series", created from en- "in(to) + fil "thread, string" + -ade, a noun-forming suffix indicating an action or result of an action. English borrowed fil for its file. The French word was passed down from Latin filum "thread, string", which Latin created from PIE gwh(e)i- "thread, tendon". We find the remains of this PIE word in Serbian žica "string, wire", Russian žila "vein, cord", Polish gwint "screw thread", Latvian dzija "yarn", Lithuanian gija "thread, yarn" and gysla "vein, fiber", and Albanian fill "thread". (Now for an e-ovation for George Kovac, raconteur extraordinaire in the Agora, for suggesting today's intriguing Good Word.)
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