gabion

plural gabions

1. historicalgovernmentA cylindrical basket or cage of wicker which was filled with earth or stones and used in fortifications and other engineering work (a precursor to the sandbag).

   Then ſe the bringing of our ordinance / Along the trench into the battery, / VVhere vve vvil haue gabions of ſix foot broad / To ſaue our Cannoniers from muſket ſhot, […]

   c. 1587–1588 (date written), [Christopher Marlowe], Tamburlaine the Great. […] The Second Part […], 2nd edition, part 2, London: […] [R. Robinson for] Richard Iones, […], published 1592, →OCLC; reprinted as Tamburlaine the Great (A Scolar Press Facsimile), Menston, Yorkshire; London: Scolar Press, 1973, →ISBN, Act III, scene i, signature [G6], recto

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   When our artillery came before the walls of the town, the English within the walls killed some of our men, and several pioneers who were making gabions. And seeing they were so wounded that there was no hope of curing them, their comrades stripped them, and put them still living inside the gabions, which served to fill them up.

   1563, Ambroise Paré, The Journey to Havre de Grace

2. A woven wire mesh unit, sometimes rectangular, made from a continuous mesh panel and filled with stones sometimes coated with polyvinyl chloride.
3. civil engineeringA porous metal cylinder filled with stones and used in a variety of civil engineering contexts, especially in the construction of retaining walls, the reinforcing of steep slopes, or in the prevention of erosion in river banks.
4. A knickknack, objet d'art, curiosity, collectable.

   Reliquiae Trotcosienses: Or, the Gabions of the Late Jonathan Oldbuck Esq. of Monkbarns — title of unfinished novel by Walter Scott.

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   1774, James Cant, introduction, The Muses Threnodie p. vi, quoted in 2004, Walter Scott Reliquiae Trotcosiensis, Edinburgh University Press, p.6, The meaning of the word Gabion, as it is used in the poem, is not to be sought for in any dictionary. It was of the venerable old gentleman Mr Ruthven′s own coining, and it was well enough understood among his select friends, to mean nothing else but the miscellaneous curiosities in his closet humorously described in the poem.