encampment

What it means

1. countableoftenuncountablegovernmentA place where people (such as displaced people, soldiers, or travellers) encamp, that is, stay in tents or other temporary structures; a camp or campsite.

   In Mississippi, Tom turned an encampment of do-gooder burners into an organization he dubbed Burners Without Borders.

   2011, Steven T. Jones, The Tribes of Burning Man: How an Experimental City in the Desert is Shaping the New American Counterculture, San Francisco, Calif.: Consortium of Collective Consciousness, →ISBN

   4 more examples

   As ſoon as he came to the top of thoſe Hills he plainly diſcovered the Creek or Harbour vvhere the Pyrate Ships lay, and vvhere they had form'd their Encampment on the Shore.

   1725, [Daniel Defoe], “Part I”, in A New Voyage Round the World, by a Course Never Sailed before. […], London: […] A[rthur] Bettesworth, […]; and W. Mears, […], →OCLC, page 69

   One of the greatest dangers that beset the travellers in this part of their expedition, was the vast number of rattlesnakes which infested the rocks about the rapids and portages, and on which the men were in danger of treading. They were often found, too, in quantities about the encampments.

   1836 October, Washington Irving, chapter XIII, in Astoria, or Anecdotes of an Enterprise beyond the Rocky Mountains. […], volume II, Philadelphia, Pa.: [Henry Charles] Carey, [Isaac] Lea, & Blanchard, →OCLC, page 116

   [P]erhaps, had the Moors passed these gates, and reached the Christian encampment, lulled, as it was, in security and sleep, that wild army of twenty thousand desperate men might have saved Granada; and Spain might, at this day, possess the only civilised empire which the faith of Mahomet ever founded.

   1838, [Edward Bulwer-Lytton], “The Return—the Riot—the Treachery—and the Death”, in “Leila; or, The Siege of Granada”, in Leila; or, The Siege of Granada: And Calderon, the Courtier. […], London: Longman, Orme, Brown, Green, and Longmans; Paris: Delloy and Co., →OCLC, book V, page 286

   Shortly after leaving the station, the train passes the site of a small halt, built in August, 1889, to serve a large army encampment situated nearby.

   1946 July–August, K. Westcott Jones, “Isle of Wight Central Railway—2”, in The Railway Magazine, London: Tothill Press, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 243

2. countablefigurativelyuncountableA place where people or things stay temporarily.

   This was an ancient lobster's house, / A lobster of prodigious nous, / So old that barnacles had spread / Their white encampments o'er its head,— […]

   1853 November, James Russell Lowell, “A Moosehead Journal: Addressed to the Edelmann Storg at the Bagni di Lucca”, in Fireside Travels, Boston, Mass.: Ticknor and Fields, published 1864, →OCLC, page 122

   1 more example

   The Swannekke Island protesters’ camp lies on the mainland between a beach and a marshy lagoon. ... Tatty tents, rainbow-sprayed camper vans, and trailer homes look like unwanted gifts the Pacific dumped there. A strung banner declares: planet against seaboard. ... White toddlers tanned brown as leather paddle in the lazy shallows; a bearded apostle washes clothes in a tub; a couple of snaky teenagers kiss in the dune grass. Luisa locks her VW and crosses the scrub to the encampment.

   2004, David Mitchell, “Half-Lives: The First Luisa Rey Mystery”, in Cloud Atlas, →ISBN, page 122

3. broadlycountableuncountablearchaeologyAn enclosed or fortified prehistoric site, especially a European Iron Age hill-fort.

In a sentence

As ſoon as he came to the top of thoſe Hills he plainly diſcovered the Creek or Harbour vvhere the Pyrate Ships lay, and vvhere they had form'd their Encampment on the Shore.

1725, [Daniel Defoe], “Part I”, in A New Voyage Round the World, by a Course Never Sailed before. […], London: […] A[rthur] Bettesworth, […]; and W. Mears, […], →OCLC, page 69

Where it comes from

PIE word *h₁én From encamp (“to establish a camp or temporary shelter”) + -ment (suffix forming nouns denoting actions or their results).