cantilever
Pronunciation
  • (British) IPA: /ˈkantɪliːvə/
Noun

cantilever (plural cantilevers)

  1. (architecture) A beam anchored at one end and projecting into space, such as a long bracket projecting from a wall to support a balcony.
    • 1951, Sinclair Lewis, World So Wide, Chapter ,
      He loved Litchfield, Sharon, Williamsburg; he preferred the Georgian, and he had theories about developing a truly American style. He was called a plodder by all the Kivis, and in turn he disliked their bleak blocks of Modernist cement, their glass-fronted hen-houses, their architectural spiders with cantilever claws.
    • 2004, Alan Hollinghurst, The Line of Beauty, Bloomsbury, 2005, Chapter 10,
      The service stairs were next to the main stairs, separated only by a wall, but what a difference there was between them: the narrow back stairs, dangerously unrailed, under the bleak gleam of a skylight, each step worn down to a steep hollow, turned tightly in a deep grey shaft; whereas the great main sweep, a miracle of cantilevers, dividing and joining again, was hung with the portraits of prince-bishops, and had ears of corn in its wrought-iron banisters that trembled to the tread.
Translations Verb

cantilever (cantilevers, present participle cantilevering; past and past participle cantilevered)

  1. To project (something) in the manner of or by means of a cantilever.



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