Definition of "turret" []

• A small tower or tower-shaped projection on a building. (noun)
• A low, heavily armored structure, usually rotating horizontally, containing mounted guns and their gunners or crew, as on a warship or tank. (noun)
• A domelike gunner's enclosure projecting from the fuselage of a combat aircraft. (noun)
• A tall wooden structure mounted on wheels and used in ancient warfare by besiegers to scale the walls of an enemy fortress. (noun)
• An attachment for a lathe consisting of a rotating cylindrical block holding various cutting tools. (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.

• "Nearly fifty years ago I sat cross-legged on the floor of what we called the turret room at the end of the long corridor above McDonald Road, and read about Everest in ‘The National Geographic’, and wanted to be a mountaineer."
• "The wall of the turret is a series of cellular spaces, like the chine of a shell-fish; and all these iron cells are to be filled up with teak, making one solid and uniform mass, which is to be again strengthened and rendered well-nigh impregnable by armour-plates."
• "I mean it certainly has it s defensive value (I'm pretty sure it's the most indestructible thing in the marvel universe), but in the world war 2 sense, imagine the experience of hiding in a trech with your squad pinned down and all of a sudden the NAzi turret is knocked down by a red white and blue disc with a star in the middle of it."