I was re-reading some of the Narnia books over the weekend. I came across a word I didn’t recognise in *The Horse and His Boy * - I presumably just skimmed over it as a child.
It’s the word estres. I can’t find it any of my dictionaries.
The context is the following quote, which I’ve altered slightly to avoid giving away any part of the plot:
“And tomorrow”, he added, “shalt thou come over all the castle with me and see the estres and mark all its strength and weakness: for it will be thine to guard when I’m gone.”
The Webster’s New International Dictionary of the English Language, 2nd Edition Unabridged (a Merriam-Webster), published in 1951 defines estres as: divisions in a house, garden, etc.
It’s also Spanglish – and, now, semi-formal Spanish, at least in Mexico – for “[psychological] stress”. This almost fits in the Narnia quote (at least in the altered version given by the OP)!
The OED marks the word as “obs.” and has no citations from after 1480 (apart from a citation in a dictionary published in 1775), and gives no pronunciation guide - presumably because it is impossible to say how a word not in use for the past five hundred years or more was pronounced.
Pronounce it how you like. Nobody can say you are wrong.
