Enfilade

[Dr. Goodword]

• 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.)

[George Kovac]

As an architectural style, enfilade can be quite grand. See these images: https://www.google.com/search?client=sa ... =661&dpr=3

Apart from its visual appeal, one can imagine the majesty of the nobility and their retinue processing dramatically through the series of doors.

At the other end of the range of this architectural device is a type of narrow, inexpensive, one-story house, usually made of wood, with no interior hallways. All rooms line up, so that you had to pass through each room in order to reach the last room in the back. These were homes for poor folk. Typically the doorways between the rooms aligned. The colloquial name for this style of house is “shotgun” because if you opened all the doors you could fire a shotgun through the house from the front porch to the back yard without hitting the house itself. This colloquialism is a very satisfying conflation of the ballistic and architectural meanings of “enfilade.”

Here is an image of a shotgun house:
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/imag ... 8idpaRdA&s

[George Kovac]

While the word "enfilade" derives from French, Latin and ultimately PIE, the concept is not unique to the Indo-European experience. It is a pleasing architectural feature that has been discovered and embraced by other cultures.

Attached is an example of enfilade in Incan architecture, in the remains of the Temple of the Sun in Cuzco, Peru. (The Spanish plundered the gold coverings and destroyed most of the Temple, building a convent over the Incan foundations.) Still standing today are three adjacent chambers from the Temple of the Sun, each with a window aligned in enfilade so that you can see through all three chambers if you stand in front of the first window on your tip-toes. Note that the shape of the windows is a trapezoid. Incan architects favored the trapezoid because it proved resilient in earthquakes. The shape also had aesthetic appeal, and was widely used in doors, windows and niches in Incan architecture. Earthquakes in Cuzco have nearly destroyed the the Spanish convent over the years, which has been rebuilt, but the Incan foundations, and those parts of the Temple of the Sun that had not been razed by the Spaniards, have survived intact since the pre-colonial period.

[Debbymoge]

"Surely, George, you are mistaken!"
So cried Ms. Tunghin-Chic.
"It must have been the advanced Spanish adventurers, bringing knowledge and civilization to those poor savages, who taught them to construct safer buildings. The great empires of the Western World had nothing to learn from any of the primitive societies they so generously shared modern ideas, beliefs and wealth with-- even though they had in fact ended up West when they thought they had arrived East."

[George Kovac]

Dear Ms. Tunghin-Chic,

Thank you. You make a legitimate observation. The topic is perhaps beyond the scope or focus of this website, but the digression is worthy and ultimately bears on the morphology of language. Let me begin by understating the obvious; the relationship between indigenous and Spanish culture is complex and conflicted and I am no expert on the subject. I also note that conquest and immigration has been a major factor, for better or worse or both, in changing language and culture throughout the world; just ask the Normans, Huns, Romans and Ottomans and the current inhabitants of the territories they conquered. The Incas achieved astonishing accomplishments in the mere 97 years of their rule—clearly, they were building on knowledge that they took from the earlier indigenous cultures they conquered. That said, the Spaniards were less open to accepting and exploiting the accomplishments of the Incas and their predecessors.


A word I heard often in Peru on professionally guided tours of museums, churches and ancient sites was “syncretism” (which I think could be a candidate for the Good Word of the day). I could never tell if the word was used merely descriptively, or as a euphemism, endorsement, excuse or indictment of the results of the Spanish conquest. I’ll cite two amusing, humble examples of this syncretism, one cultural, the other linguistic. (I acknowledge that there are more serious examples of syncretism, especially of syncretism gone bad; that is a serious debate for another forum.). (1) In the Cathedral at Cuzco is an oil painting of The Last Supper, reminiscent of its European models. But in this version, Jesus is serving the Apostles roasted guinea pig—a local delicacy. (2) I spoke to a young boy while visiting his family at their home in Cuzco. Quechua is an official language of Peru and is widely spoken in the Sacred Valley as a primary or second language. In my basic Spanish, I asked the boy what was the dog’s name. He said “Inti!” When the boy saw the blank expression on my face, he explained that "inti” is the Quechua word for “sol”, i.e., sun. The dog was Incan.

[Debbymoge]

Thank you very much for your very enlightening response, and for a new word.
I could see the meaning immediately because of your clear use. (Perhaps I also even knew it when I was still able to call on my internal dictionary.)
I think, given the situation of the world today, we are in desperate need of more syncretists!

[David Myer]

Bravo George, a most illuminating word (Enfilade) and delightfully expanded. Well done. And thanks for the links to the architectural images. Also interesting and amusing is your introduction to syncretism. Thanks, Debby too, for your productive provocations.

As a very young man, I lived very close to Hampton Court in England, a fine Tudor palace. We would often visit with friends and relatives who had come to see us. The Palace abounds with enfilades. On one occasion I recall hearing that the reason for having them was so that the King (Henry VIII) could see from a long distance, who was coming to visit him and if necessary had plenty of time to escape from those he didn't want to see. He didn't like surprises, apparently.

But remember that the palace was built by Thomas Wolsey as a home for himself, and only given to the King when Thomas had fallen into disfavour and was trying to save his own bacon. So the enfilades would have been there before the King needed to shirk any of his civic duties. Nonetheless it makes a good story.

Another remarkable feature of Hampton Court is that the King's Bedroom is miles of cold and drafty enfilades from the Queen's bedroom. I presumed as a youngster that this was some primitive form of birth control. But of course eventually discovered the error of my thinking when studying history at school. It seems Henry worked very hard at trying to produce a son; so hard, indeed, that the entire course of British history was irrevocably changed. But that's another story.

[George Kovac]

David wrote:

As a very young man, I lived very close to Hampton Court in England, a fine Tudor palace

There is a new book “The Palace” by Gareth Russell (Atria, 480 pages) which describes in sometimes extraneous (but delicious) detail the history of Hampton Court and its residents over the centuries.

[David Myer]

Thanks George. I will look out for it.

[George Kovac]

I just watched “Saving Private Ryan,” a great film, and one I have seen several times. For this viewing I selected the “close captioning” option so that I could closely follow the dialog, some of which is obfuscated by the noise of battle.

I noticed that the Tom Hanks character shouted to his advance man to “defilade,” to seek shelter in a bomb crater as he crawled up the embankment to throw a grenade in an enemy machine gun nest at the top of the cliffs of the Normandy beach. Later, in a French village where an enemy sniper was active, the Hanks character needed to reposition his men across the street. He told them to scatter as they ran: “don’t give him an enfilade.”