barricade

plural barricades

1. A barrier constructed across a road, especially as a military defence
2. An obstacle, barrier, or bulwark.

   Such a barricade as would greatly annoy, or absolutely stop, the currents of the atmosphere.

   1713, W[illiam] Derham, Physico-Theology: Or, A Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God, from His Works of Creation. […], London: […] W[illiam] Innys, […], →OCLC

   2 more examples

   Her future friend from grade six, Millie Mirarch, was often caught in various parts of the school being told that she was extremely pretty —for a girl with teeth held together by a metal wire that protruded well beyond the barricade of her lips.

   2019, Roshini Sharma, Dr. Scoop and The N.E.R.D.S.: The Frankfurter of Doom

   Salah will ask himself forever how he did not score at least one goal here. He might have nightmares featuring the face of Courtois, such was the one-man barricade he formed.

   2022 May 28, Phil McCulty, “Liverpool 0-1 Real Madrid”, in BBC Sport

3. figurativelyin pluralA place of confrontation.

   1 more example

   I have a friend who finds the whole idea of a gay marching band distasteful on the grounds that it replicates straight culture. I'm not ready to follow her to the barricades on that because I think that to some extent the sight of women banging bass drums and men prancing around in pink spandex has to undermine a patriarchal and heterosexist assumption or two.

   1983 December 3, Jolanta Benal, “Spandex, Sousa, Bad Politics”, in Gay Community News, volume 11, number 20, page 6

4. figurativelyLine of people standing behind or closest to the barricade in the pit section of a live music concert.

present singular third person barricades · participle present barricading · participle past barricaded · past barricaded

1. To close or block a road etc., as, or using, a barricade.

   I stood beside the sources of the Arveiron, which take their rise in a glacier, that with slow pace is advancing down from the summit of the hills, to barricade the valley.

   1831 October 31, Mary W[ollstonecraft] Shelley, chapter X, in Frankenstein: Or, The Modern Prometheus (Standard Novels; IX), 3rd edition, London: Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley, […], →OCLC, page 80

2. To keep someone in (or out), using a blockade, especially ships in a port.