brattice

Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition

  • noun A partition, typically of wood or cloth, erected in a mine for ventilation.
  • noun A breastwork erected during a siege.

from The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

  • noun In mining, a board, plank, or brick lining or partition in a level of shaft, usually designed to form an air-passage or confine the current of air to a certain route.
  • verb To separate by a brattice.

Examples

  • The boys came at length to a brattice, which is a screen, of either wood or heavy cloth, set up in a passage to divert the current of air to a bench where workmen are engaged, and dodged down behind it, first shutting off their lights, of course.

    The Call of the Beaver Patrol or, A Break in the Glacier

  • Across all this face the brattice had not been continued, approach up this slope being the most difficult to sustain.

    A River So Long

  • A group of men could back up against one of the headings that's -- that's kind of like a three -- three-sided room, and then take these materials and build a barricade in front of them, and seal it with some of the materials, brattice cloth, other materials they would have down there with them.

    CNN Transcript Jan 2, 2006

  • In the corner between them, a great coiling growth, blackened now in its winter hibernation, stripped of leaves, clambered as high as the battlements where the brattice began.

    Brother Cadfael's Penance

Note

The origin of the word 'brattice' is uncertain.