belt

/ˈbɛlt/

belt noun: a band worn around the waist to hold clothing to one's body (usually pants), hold weapons (such as a gun or sword), or serve as a decorative piece of clothing.

Image: Crazy Ivan, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

belt (plural belts)

A band worn around the waist to hold clothing to one's body (usually pants), hold weapons (such as a gun or sword), or serve as a decorative piece of clothing.
- As part of the act, the fat clown's belt broke, causing his pants to fall down.
- Master leathercrafter does handcrafted wallets, belts, purses, handbags etc., supporting self and helpers. Good enough to carve fantst art and portraits into leather.1987 August 15, Robert Benitez, “Personal advertisement”, in Gay Community News, volume 15, number 5, page 14
Synonyms:

girdle, waistband, sash, strap
A band used as a restraint for safety purposes, such as a seat belt.
- Keep your belt fastened; this is going to be quite a bumpy ride.
A band that is used in a machine to help transfer motion or power.
- The motor had a single belt that snaked its way back and forth around a variety of wheels.
Anything that resembles a belt, or that encircles or crosses like a belt; a strip or stripe.
- a belt of trees; a belt of sand
A trophy in the shape of a belt, generally awarded for martial arts.
- the heavyweight belt
A collection of small bodies (such as asteroids) which orbit a star.
One of certain girdles or zones on the surface of the planets Jupiter and Saturn, supposed to be of the nature of clouds.
A band of armor along the sides of a warship, protecting the ship's vital spaces.
- The battleship was protected by a twelve-inch belt just above the waterline.
A powerful blow, often made with a fist or heavy object.
- After the bouncer gave him a solid belt to the gut, Simon had suddenly had enough of bar fights.
Synonyms:

blow, punch, sock, wallop
A quick drink of liquor.
- Care to join me in a belt of scotch?
Synonyms:

dram, nip
(capitalized, usually) A geographical region known for a particular product, feature or demographic (Corn Belt, Bible Belt, Black Belt, Green Belt).
The part of the strike zone at the height of the batter's waist.
- That umpire called that pitch a strike at the belt.

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A device that holds and feeds cartridges into a belt-fed weapon.
A vocal tone produced by singing with chest voice above the break (or passaggio), in a range typically sung in head voice.
- Both auditionees had great ranges but Diamond had the strong belt we really need for the finale.
- As previously mentioned, there was unexpected behavior in laryngeal lowering for belt in several singers and unchanged laryngeal height for two, as well as stable opening or widening of the pharyngeal walls, which must be investigated further.1999, Jeannette Lovetri, Susan Lesh, Peak Woo, “Preliminary Study on the Ability of Trained Singers to Control the Intrinsic and Extrinsic Laryngeal Musculature”, in Journal of Voice, volume 13...
A mostly-continuous, often curvilinear structure expressed on the surface or in the subsurface of a terrestrial planet or other solid planemo, such as a mountain belt, a fold and thrust belt, or an ore belt.
- This belt of deformed platform sediments parallels the suture running east-to-west across the north of the region, which was left when the ocean basin that originally separated the two ancient continents on either side of it was consumed by subduction.
- Most foreland fold and thrust belts are linear or arcuate belts of folds and thrust faults that form a marginal part of an orogenic belt between an undeformed craton and a more intensely deformed inner zone.1980, B. C. Burchfiel, “Foreland Fold and Thrust Belts—Review”, in AAPG Bulletin, volume 64, number 5, American Association of Petroleum Geologists, →DOI, page 684

Verb

belt (third-person singular simple present belts, present participle belting, simple past and past participle belted)

(transitive) To fasten a belt on; to encircle with a belt.
- Edgar belted himself in and turned the car's ignition.
- The rotund man had difficulty belting his pants, and generally wore suspenders to avoid the issue.
Synonyms:

buckle, fasten, strap
(transitive) To encircle; to surround.
- The small town was belted by cornfields in all directions.
Synonyms:

circle, girdle, surround
(transitive) To invest (a person) with a belt as part of a formal ceremony such as knighthood.
(transitive) To hit with a belt.
- The child was misbehaving so he was belted as punishment.
Synonyms:

strap, whip
(colloquial, transitive) To hit someone or something, especially forcefully; to bash.
- The angry player belted the official across the face, and as a result was ejected from the game.
- Bobby belting the ball1996, “Three Lions”, performed by David Baddiel and Frank Skinner
Synonyms:

bash, clobber, smack, wallop
(transitive) To hit a pitched ball a long distance, usually for a home run.
- He belted that pitch over the grandstand.
(informal, transitive) To scream or sing in a loud, strong manner.
- He belted out the national anthem.
- Céline Dion belted her iconic song "My Heart Will Go On" in a show-stopping performance at the 2017 Billboard Music Awards on May 21. The legendary singer gave the throwback performance in honor of the 20th anniversary of the hit song from the Titanic soundtrack.2017 May 22, Mallory Carra, “Celine Dion Is Making Everyone Cry”, in Bustle, BDG Media, retrieved 01 Jan 2022
(transitive) To drink quickly, often in gulps.
- He belted down a shot of whisky.
Synonyms:

gulp, pound, slurp, book, speed, whiz, zoom
(intransitive) To move, run, drive, etc., very fast.
- He was really belting along.
- I had to be pretty quick once I'd pulled the string and belt down the garden before the tiny tits escaped.1983, Bill Oddie, Gone Birding, London: Methuen, page 138

Proper noun capitalized: Belt

Belt (countable and uncountable, plural Belts)

A surname.
A town in Cascade County, Montana, United States.
(abbreviation, ellipsis) Ellipsis of Main Asteroid Belt: a region of Solar System.
- Believe it or not, Belter slang — or, more officially, Belter Creole — isn't a completely made-up way of communicating. It's actually a mix of several Earth languages spoken by the original settlers in the Asteroid Belt colonies — very appropriate, as the Belt is a melting pot of several different...2016 January 15, Bryan Enk, “Belter Creole 101”, in SYFY, archived from the original on 15 Apr 2022

belt meaning in Hindi, Marathi, Urdu and Bengali

belt in Hindi

band worn around the waist: पेटी peṭī, बेल्ट belṭ

belt in Marathi

band worn around the waist: बेल्ट belṭa, पट्टा paṭṭā

belt in Urdu

band worn around the waist: پیٹی peṭī, بیلْٹ belṭ, کَمَر بَنْد, کَمَر kamar

belt in Bengali

band worn around the waist: বেল্ট belṭo

More languagesFewer languages

belt in Kannada: ಬೆಲ್ಟ್, ಬೆಲ್ಟು, ಬೆಲ್ಟನ್ನು
belt in Gujarati: પટ્ટો, બેલ્ટ, પટ્ટા
belt in Odia: ବେଲ୍ଟ୍ belṭ
belt in Assamese: পেটী peti
belt in Pashto: کمربند kamarband
belt in Arabic: حِزَام ḥizām, زُنَّار zunnār, نِطَاق niṭāq, حزام ḥizām
belt in Malay: tali pinggang
belt in Indonesian: sabuk
belt in Thai: เข็มขัด kěm-kàt
belt in Vietnamese: dây lưng, dây nịt, thắt lưng, vành đai
belt in Myanmar: ခါးပတ် hka:pat

Examples of belt in a sentence

The law is clear that you should always wear a seat belt.
Seat belts must be kept fastened during taxi, takeoff, turbulence, and landing.
The asteroid belt consists of a collection of dust, rubble, and minor planets.

All 40 example sentences with belt

Synonyms of belt

18 more synonymsFewer synonyms

All synonyms of belt

Forms of belt

Noun
plural	belts
Verb
third-person singular present	belts
present participle	belting
past participle	belted
past	belted
Proper noun
plural	Belts

Past tense of belt: belted

Plural of belt: belts

Origin of belt

From Middle English belt, from Old English belt (“belt, girdle”), from Proto-West Germanic *baltī̆, from Proto-Germanic *baltijaz (“girdle, belt”), from Latin balteus (“belt, sword-belt”), of Etruscan origin. Cognate with Scots belt (“belt”), Dutch belt, German Balz (“belt”), Danish bælte (“belt”), Norwegian Bokmål and Norwegian Nynorsk belte (“belt”), Swedish bälte (“belt, cincture, girdle, zone”), Faroese and Icelandic belti (“belt”).

* As an English and north/Low German surname, from the noun belt. * As a German surname, short form of the old Germanic name Baldher, composed of *balþ (“bold”) + *hari (“army”). Compare Belter. * Also as a north/Low German surname, from the place name Beelte, a small town in Giesen. * As a Dutch surname Van den Belt, from the noun belt (“low hill”).

Phrases with belt

113 more phrasesFewer phrases

Words that rhyme with belt

12 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about belt

What does belt mean?: Belt means a band worn around the waist to hold clothing to one's body (usually pants), hold weapons (such as a gun or sword), or serve as a decorative piece of clothing.
What is belt in Hindi?: Belt in Hindi is पेटी (peṭī), बेल्ट (belṭ). See Belt meaning in Hindi.
What part of speech is belt?: Belt can be a noun, a verb or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce belt?: Belt is pronounced /ˈbɛlt/.
What is the plural of belt?: The plural of belt is belts.

Words near belt in the dictionary

Adapted from Wiktionary: belt (page history and authors); Belt (page history and authors); belt (Kannada, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); belt (Gujarati, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-belt.ogg.

Cite this entry: “belt.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/belt. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.