1. Fortif. A fieldwork (usually rough and temporary) thrown up a few feet in height for defence against an enemy; a parapet.
1642. Relat. Action bef. Cyrencester, 3. Gardens … divided by many low dry stone walls, as good as Breast workes.
1645. R. Symonds, Diary Civ. War (1859), 231–2. At Worcester Prince Maurice has made without the ditch … a low breast work, and a stockado without.
1693. Luttrell, Brief Rel. (1857), III. 152. The English made a breastwork of the dead, to cover them in the time of action.
1809. W. Irving, Knickerb. (1861), 98. The mud breastworks had long been levelled with the earth.
1839. Thirlwall, Greece, II. 346. Closing their wicker shields, and fixing them in the ground, so as to form a kind of breastwork before them.
1861. Smiles, Engineers, II. 236. The Hythe Military Canal … protected by a breastwork on the land side.
b. transf. and fig.
1828. Carlyle, Misc. (1857), I. 230. Behind the outmost breastwork of gentility.
1821. De Quincey, Confess., Wks. I. 103. This watery breastwork, a perpendicular wall of water carrying itself as true as if controlled by a mason’s plumb-line.
2. In various technical uses: a. Naut. ‘A sort of balustrade of rails, mouldings, or stanchions which terminates the quarter-deck and poop at the fore ends’ (Smyth, Sailor’s Word-bk.); see also quot. 1870. b. Arch. The parapet of a building. c. = BREASTING 2.
1769. Falconer, Dict. Marine (1789), Breastwork … frequently decorated with sculpture.
c. 1850. Rudim. Navig. (Weale), 101. The breast-work … serves to make a separation from the main-deck.
1870. Daily News, 27 Sept., 2/2. Having the space occupied by the turrets, funnel, hatchways, &c., raised seven or eight feet above the low deck. The armoured sides of this superstructure Mr. Reed calls the ‘breastwork.’
1875. Ure, Dict. Arts, II. 849. A good example of the form of iron buckets employed in the breast wheel … is shown in fig. 1178: a. shrouding…. e. breastwork.
