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Based on its spelling, you might think that redoubt shares its origin with words such as doubt and redoubtable, both of which come from the Latin verb dubitare, meaning "to be in doubt." But that's not the case. Redoubt actually comes to us (via the French word redoute and the Italian word ridotto) from a different Latin verb—reducere, meaning "to lead back," the same root that gives us reduce. How that b ended up in redoubt is a lingering question, but some etymologists have posited that the word might have been conflated with another redoubt—a now-archaic verb meaning "to regard with awe, dismay, or dread" which, unlike its twin, does indubitably come from dubitare.
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Examples of redoubt in a Sentence
Byandrew Lawler, science.org, 23 Oct. 2024
The whereabouts of his own family was unknown, but thought to appear briefly in surveillance footage recovered earlier this year from an underground redoubt Israeli forces said was located beneath a cemetery.
—Karl Vick, TIME, 18 Oct. 2024
On the left, the failure of cultural power to produce political change tends to lead to a doubling down on the cultural side, so that wholesome college campuses can seem the last redoubt of Red Guard attitudes, though not, to be sure, of Red Guard authority.
—Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker, 14 Oct. 2024
The rebels were on the verge of routing Hadi’s forces in Marib governorate: the last government redoubt in Yemen’s north and the site of major oil and gas facilities.
—Stephen Pomper, Foreign Affairs, 2 Dec. 2022
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Cite this Entry
“Redoubt.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/redoubt. Accessed 22 Nov. 2024.
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