bivouac
Other forms: bivouacked; bivouacs; bivouacking; bivouaced
If you ever draped a blanket over bushes or lawn chairs in the backyard and pretended to bunk down under it when you were a kid, you’ve made a bivouac — a temporary, makeshift camp with little or no cover.
Bivouac comes from the 18th-century German word biwacht, and originally meant a patrol of ordinary citizens who helped the town’s night watchmen. Nowadays, you’ll most often see it used as a noun, but it can be a verb too — and it's often associated with soldiers, though that’s not essential. If you tend to sleepwalk, you might not want to bivouac at the edge of that cliff; make your bivouac in the meadow instead.
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temporary living quarters specially built by the army for soldierssynonyms: camp, cantonment, encampmenttypes:boot campcamp for training military recruitshutmentan encampment of huts (chiefly military)type of:military quartersliving quarters for personnel on a military post
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a site where people can pitch a tentsynonyms: campground, camping area, camping ground, camping site, campsite, encampment
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live in or as if in a tent
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Vocabulary lists containing bivouac
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