Also 8–9 stoccade, (9 stocade). [a. F. † estocade, corruption of estacade, a. Sp. estacada: see STACCADO, STOCKADO.
In the 17th c. the Fr. word was occasionally miswritten estocade, by confusion with estocade sword-thrust, STOCCADO. This may be in part the source of the Eng. form.]
1. A defensive barrier of stakes or piles placed across a harbor or river, around a building, village, and the like; spec. in Fortification, a barricade for entrenchments and redoubts, usually made of timber, furnished with loopholes for gun-fire.
1614. Gorges, Lucan, II. 77, marg. The like [i.e., a boom across the harbour’s mouth] was vsed by the Spaniards before Antwerpe, which they tearmed a Stockade.
1777. Mason, Eng. Garden, II. 293. As, round some citadel, the engineer Directs his sharp stoccade.
1810. Wellington, in Gurw., Disp. (1838), VI. 11. To secure effectually the breach on the left of the line … by a stockade.
1812. J. Henry, Camp. agst. Quebec, 19. The Fort … consisted of old Block-houses and a stocade.
1834–47. J. S. Macaulay, Field Fortif. (1851), 92. Of Stoccades. If the work were a lunette, a stoccade, or strong palisade may be placed across the ditch.
1852. Doveton, Burmese War, i. 19. It [Rangoon] naturally presented an assemblage of fragile bamboo tenements … encircled by a wooden fence,… known to us by the name of a ‘stockade.’
1865. Livingstone, Zambesi, xxvii. 557. On the 11th October we arrived at the stockade of Chinsamba.
1879. Cassell’s Techn. Educ., I. 162. Stoccades are formidable parapets constructed entirely of wood in situations not exposed to artillery fire…. Ordinary stoccades consist of a row of upright timbers 12 or 14 inches in diameter, and from 10 to 15 feet in length.
1892. Col. G. Philips, Text Bk. Fortif. (ed. 5), 74. A Stockade is a defensible rifle proof wall, made usually of timber or railway iron, and provided with loopholes to fire from.
2. transf. a. (See quots.)
1858. Simmonds, Dict. Trade, Stockade, a fortification or fence of pointed stakes, in New Zealand called a pah; a cattle-pen.
1905. W. E. B. Du Bois, Souls of Black Folk, vii. 126. And here, too, is the high whitewashed fence of the ‘stockade,’ as the county prison [Dougherty, Georgia, U.S.] is called; the white folks say it is ever full of black criminals,—the black folks say that only colored boys are sent to jail, and they not because they are guilty, but because the State needs criminals to eke out its income by their forced labor.
b. Hydraul. Engin. A row of piles serving as a breakwater or as a protection to an embankment.
1891. Century Dict.
1895. Daily News, 21 March, 5/3. One of the gales of February … destroyed 3,000 square yards of the stockade between Willop and Dymchurch.
3. attrib. and Comb., as stockade timber, work; stockade-like adj.; stockade fort [FORT sb.1 1 c] Brit. N. Amer. and U.S., a fortified trading station, stockade tambour (cf. TAMBOUR sb. 6).
1756. Washington, Lett., Writ. 1889, I. 397. I am directed to evacuate all the *stockade forts.
1809. W. Irving, Knickerb. (1861), 65. The land being thus fairly purchased of the Indians,… a stockade fort and trading house were forthwith erected.
1894. Outing (U.S.), XXIV. 337/1. A *stockade-like inclosure.
1892. Col. G. Philips, Text Bk. Fortif. (ed. 5), 164. A *stockade tambour may be from 6 to 9 feet broad inside, and long enough for three or four men firing each way.
1879. Cassell’s Techn. Educ., II. 129/2. This brings the loopholes close to the ground, and exposes as little as possible of the *stoccade timbers. Ibid. As a rule the side and front walls are constructed of *stoccade work.
