Definition of "merlon" [mer•lon]

• A solid portion between two crenels in a battlement or crenelated wall. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "As soon as he felt they should be sufficiently distant, he crept hastily up the steps and flung himself through the embrasure, to flatten himself on the floor of the brattice under a merlon."
• "But even as he made his way along the guardwalk, sensibly from merlon to merlon like an experienced soldier with a proper regard for his own skin, he found himself approving Philip's deployment of his bowmen and his espringales, and the practical way his garrison went about their defence."
• "The three of them dropped together, as men were dropping under every merlon along the wall, pressed into the angle of wall and flagged walk."