Dungeon

[citation needed] An oubliette (from the French oublier, meaning 'to forget') or bottle dungeon is a basement room which is accessible only from a hatch or hole (an angstloch) in a high ceiling.

[citation needed] Though it is uncertain, both dungeon and donjon are thought to derive from the Middle Latin word dominus, meaning "lord" or "master".

An oubliette (same origin as the French oublier, meaning "to forget"[2]) is a basement room which is accessible only from a hatch or hole (an angstloch) in a high ceiling.

[5] An example of what might be popularly termed an "oubliette" is the particularly claustrophobic cell in the dungeon of Warwick Castle's Caesar's Tower, in central England.

The positioning of the supposed oubliette within the larger dungeon, situated in a small alcove, is typical of garderobe arrangement within medieval buildings.

In Alexandre Dumas's La Reine Margot, Catherine de Medici is portrayed gloating over a victim in the oubliettes of the Louvre.

In this context, the word "dungeon" has come to be used broadly to describe any labyrinthine complex (castle, cave system, etc) rather than a prison cell or torture chamber specifically.

[citation needed] In the musical fantasy film Labyrinth, director Jim Henson includes a scene in which the heroine Sarah is freed from an oubliette by the dwarf Hoggle, who defines it for her as "a place you put people... to forget about 'em!

"[12] In the Thomas Harris novel The Silence of the Lambs, Clarice makes a descent into Gumb's basement dungeon labyrinth in the narrative's climactic scene, where the killer is described as having an oubliette.

[13] In the Robert A. Heinlein novel Stranger in a Strange Land, the term "oubliette" is used to refer to a trash disposal much like the "memory holes" in Nineteen Eighty-Four.