The Dungeon Was Once the Strongest Tower, Not the Darkest Cell

A dungeon today is a dark cell below a castle. But the Old French *donjon* meant the keep: the tall, strongest tower, the lord's own stronghold. Because prisoners were held in its lower rooms, English took the word and let it sink to the bottom of the building. French kept the original meaning, so a *donjon* in France is still the keep.

• An underground prison cell. *Chained in the castle dungeon.*
• Any dark, closed space (figurative). *That windowless office is a dungeon.*
• A level of a game to be cleared. *The party entered the dungeon.*

Word forms

How it is used in a sentence

• The tour ends in the dungeons beneath the tower.Castle tours nearly always use the plural.
• He spent years in the dungeons of the fortress.The historical sense, meaning imprisonment.
• The game generates a new dungeon each time you play.The modern gaming sense, now the most common in casual speech.

Parts of a castle worth knowing

• Keep — the main tower, the last place to fall
• Bailey — the walled courtyard around it
• Portcullis — the heavy grille that drops over the gate
• Oubliette — a pit cell entered from above, named from the French for forgetting
• Battlements — the notched wall top to shoot from

From Old French *donjon*, probably from a Latin word for a lord's tower, related to *dominus*, master. So the word for the deepest cell and the word for the master of the house grew from the same root.