as in stronghold
a structure or place from which one can resist attack
the rebel army retreated to its bastion in the mountains to regroup
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Recent Examples of bastion
New York City, for so long a bastion of pro-Israel power, has elected a champion of equal rights for Palestinians as its next mayor.
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Andrew Cockburn, Harpers Magazine, 30 Dec. 2025
After tenures at Atlanta bastions like Miller Union, pastry chef Claudia Martinez is now taking the driver’s seat with a star-studded crew behind her.
—Su-Jit Lin, Southern Living, 17 Dec. 2025
While rural areas remain conservative bastions, farmers’ patience with Washington is wearing thin.
—Josh Funk, Fortune, 12 Dec. 2025
Trump can be seen as a bastion of free trade for the Silicon Valley capitalists, a beacon of white Christian America to the heartland Evangelicals, and a fascist demagogue to the blood and soil nationalists.
—Ryan Broderick, Rolling Stone, 24 Nov. 2025
See All Example Sentences for bastion
Recent Examples of Synonyms for bastion
Noun
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McDonald said DeSantis also could be trying to shore up Republican strongholds to mitigate the losses generally experienced by the party in power during midterm elections.—
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Campbell’s main support always came from the union stronghold of Pueblo, in southern Colorado.—
Noun
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The fortress of intellectual property This is why the Warner bid is essential, Shapiro said, repeating one of his recent theories about the coming wave of disruption in media.—
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Walk in around the massive fortress with its cannons and tunnels.—
Noun
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The area was once a citadel complex in the time of King Herod, who ruled from 37 to 5 B.C. after he was appointed king of Judea by the Romans.—
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The sprawling citadel — complete with towers, walls and barracks — was discovered at the Tel el-Kharouba archaeological site in the Sinai Peninsula, according to an Oct. 11 news release from the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities.—
Noun
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In September 2023, in the middle of the Northumberland night, a mechanic named Adam Carruthers cut down a sycamore tree more than a century old that stood in a gap along an especially picturesque section of Hadrian’s Wall, the Roman fortification that runs across the narrowest part of England.—
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Passmore’s magisterial, revisionist account of the Maginot Line—the network of French fortifications built in the 1920s and 1930s to stop a German invasion—challenges the conventional understanding of its role in World War II.—
Noun
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Outside of showing us the Secret Traitor’s handwriting on their shortlists, there were no tells from the production team about who this person could be, just shadowy footage of some hooded player wandering the castle with a lantern.—
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After the cast gathered outside the castle, host Alan Cumming selected one player in plain sight to take on the role.—
Cite this Entry
“Bastion.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/bastion. Accessed 12 Jan. 2026.
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