lodgment

• lodgement (UK)

• enPR: lŏjmənt, IPA^(key): /ˈlɑdʒmənt/

lodgment (countable and uncountable, plural lodgments)

1. An area used for lodging; a place in which a person or thing is or can be lodged.
   • 1848, William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair, Chapter XVII,

     Rawdon was denied the door by Mr. Bowls; his servants could not get a lodgment in the house at Park Lane; his letters were sent back unopened.

   • 1897, H. G. Wells, The Invisible Man, Chapter XVI,

     The door opened, and Marvel made a frantic effort to obtain a lodgment behind it.

   • 1914, James Stephens, The Demi-Gods, New York: Macmillan, 1921, Chapter III, p. 17,

     If the surprisor and the surprisee are mutually astonished, then, indeed, there is a tangle out of which anything may emerge, for two explanations are necessary at the one moment, and two explanations can no more hold the same position in time than two bodies can occupy the same lodgment in space.

   • 1922, Edmund J. Sullivan, Line: An Art Study, London: Chapman & Hall, Chapter II, p. 18,

     In the case of a wood-engraving the reverse takes place. It is not those parts removed by the burin that afford lodgment for the printer's ink, but the surface left standing and untouched by it.

   • 1958, "Posing the Right Question," Time, 7 April, 1958,

     The alarms were real: the West could indeed lose its oldest and most strategic lodgment point in the Arab Middle East […]

   • See also quotations under lodgement
2. The condition of being lodged.
   • 2000, Nick Mansfield, Subjectivity: Theories of the Self from Freud to Haraway, New York University Press, Chapter 2, p. 25,

     Nineteenth-century culture bears witness to a gradually intensifying anxiety about the structure of the self and the security of its lodgment in the world.

3. The act of lodging or depositing.
   • 1893, Hansard, 11 August, 1893,

     Full provision is made by these Acts for the efficient inspection of tea gardens and for the lodgment of complaints by coolies in districts where they are in operation.

   • 2013, Pat J. Barrett, Summary Judgment in Ireland: Principles and Defences, Bloomsbury Professional, section 1.101,

     The court may also decide to grant leave to defend, or to grant a stay on an order for judgment, conditional upon a cash lodgment being made by the defendant.

4. (military, historical) The occupation of a position by a besieging party, and the works thrown up to maintain it.