A gord is a medieval Slavonic fortified settlement, usually built on strategic sites such as hilltops, riverbanks, lake islets or peninsulas between the 6th and 12th centuries CE in Central and Eastern Europe. The typical gord usually consisted of a group of wooden houses surrounded by a wall made of earth and wood, and a palisade running along the top of the bulwark. Etymology The term ultimately descends from the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European root ǵʰortós, enclosure. The Proto-Slavic word *gordъ later differentiated into grad (Cyrillic: град), gorod (Cyrillic: город), gród in Polish, gard in Kashubian, etc. It is the root of various words in modern Slavic languages pertaining to fences and fenced-in areas (Belarusian гарадзіць, Ukrainian horodyty, Czech ohradit, Russian ogradit, Serbo-Croatian ograditi, and Polish ogradzać, grodzić, to fence off). It also has evolved into words for a garden in certain languages. Additionally, it has furnished numerous modern Slavic words for a city or town: Polish gród, plural grody (toponymic; nowadays a town or city is termed miasto, but remnants of a gród are known as grodzisko) Ancient Pomeranian and modern Kashubian gard Slovak and Czech hrad ("castle" in the modern language), or hradisko/hradiště/hradec, which are terms for gord Slovene grad ("castle" in modern Slovene) Belarusian горад (horad) Russian город (gorod) Ukrainian город (horod, dialectal and toponymic; nowadays misto) Bulgarian, Serbo-Croatian, and Macedonian grad/град The names of many Central and Eastern European cities harken back to their pasts as gords. Some of them are in countries which once were but no longer are mainly inhabited by Slavic-speaking peoples. Examples include: Horodok Gorod (toponymy) Hrod (toponymy) Hrud Horod Hrad (toponymy) Gard (Slavic toponymy) Grod (toponymy) Grad (toponymy) The words in Polish and Slovak for suburbium, podgrodzie and podhradie correspondingly, literally mean a settlement beneath a gord: the gród/hrad was frequently built at the top of a hill, and the podgrodzie/podhradie at its foot. (The Slavic prefix pod-, meaning "under/below" and descending from the Proto-Indo-European root pṓds, meaning foot, being equivalent to Latin sub-). The word survives in the names of several villages (Podgrodzie, Subcarpathian Voivodeship) and town districts (e.g., that of Olsztyn), as well as in the names of the German municipalities Puttgarden, Wagria and Putgarten, Rügen. From this same Proto-Indo-European root come the Germanic word elements *gard and *gart (as in Stuttgart), and likely also the names of Graz, Austria and Gartz, Germany. Cognate to these are English words such as