A strong wooden support or beam used in construction, particularly in fortifications or building frames.
From Middle Dutch 'bolwerk' combining 'bol' (round) and 'werk' (work), though 'bulwand' may represent a variant or dialectal form influenced by 'wand' meaning rod or staff in Germanic languages.
The shift from 'bolwerk' to various English forms like 'bulwark' and 'bulwand' shows how loanwords get reshaped to fit English phonetics—our ears literally rewrote the Dutch word into something we could say more easily.
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