cantilever
/ˈkantɪliːvə/US/ˈkæntɪˌlivɚ/
cantilever noun: a beam anchored at one end and projecting into space, such as a long bracket projecting from a wall to support a balcony.
Noun
cantilever (plural cantilevers)
- A beam anchored at one end and projecting into space, such as a long bracket projecting from a wall to support a balcony.
- cantilever arch cantilever arm cantilever armchair cantilever beam cantilever bracket cantilever brake cantilever bridge cantilever crane cantilever fin cantilever frame cantilever girder cantilever landing gear cantilever moment cantilever monoplane cantilever mounting cantilever roof cantilever...
- Eventually Sir John Fowler's and Sir Benjamin Baker's continuous steel girder bridge on the cantilever principle was adopted.1941 January, the late John Phillimore, “The Forth Bridge 1890-1940”, in Railway Magazine, page 5
- A beam anchored at one end and used as a lever within a microelectromechanical system.
- cantilever circuit
- Magnetic resonance force microscopy employs an ultrasmall cantilever arm as a platform for specimens that are then moved in and out of proximity to a tiny magnet.2009 January 13, John Markoff, “A Breakthrough in Imaging: Seeing a Virus in Three Dimensions”, in The New York Times, archived from the original on 06 Sep 2019
- A technique, similar to the spread eagle, in which the skater travels along a deep edge with knees bent and bends their back backwards, parallel to the ice.
Verb
cantilever (third-person singular simple present cantilevers, present participle cantilevering, simple past and past participle cantilevered)
- To project (something) in the manner of or by means of a cantilever.
- Just above, the museums top floor seems to shift slightly, its corners cantilevering over the edge of the story below as if it is sliding off the top of the building.2007 October 28, Nicolai Ouroussoff, “Where Gods Yearn for Long-Lost Treasures”, in New York Times
cantilever meaning in Tamil and Urdu
cantilever in Tamil
- முனைநெம்பு, வளை சட்டம், வளைவுச் சட்டம், நெடுங்கை, ஒருமுனை தாங்குவிட்டம், துருத்துவிட்டம்
cantilever in Urdu
- پایہ
Examples of cantilever in a sentence
- 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.1951, Sinclair Lewis, World So Wide, Chapter:
- The plank along which pirates made their victims walk was a cantilever.2023 May 3, Philip Haigh, “The art and science of building bridges”, in RAIL, number 982, page 40:
Forms of cantilever
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | cantilevers |
| alternative form (dated) | cantalever |
| alternative form (dated) | cantaliver |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | cantilevers |
| present participle | cantilevering |
| past participle | cantilevered |
| past | cantilevered |
Origin of cantilever
First attested in the 1660s, probably from cant (“slope, edge, corner”) + lever, but the earliest form (c. 1610) was cantlapper. First element may also be Spanish can (“dog”), an architect's term for an end of timber jutting out of a wall, on which beams rested.
Words formed from cantilever
Phrases with cantilever
Questions about cantilever
- What does cantilever mean?
- Cantilever means a beam anchored at one end and projecting into space, such as a long bracket projecting from a wall to support a balcony.
- What is cantilever in Tamil?
- Cantilever in Tamil is முனைநெம்பு, வளை சட்டம், வளைவுச் சட்டம். See Cantilever meaning in Tamil.
- How do you use cantilever in a sentence?
- 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.
- What part of speech is cantilever?
- Cantilever can be a noun or a verb.
- How do you pronounce cantilever?
- Cantilever is pronounced /ˈkantɪliːvə/ (UK).
- What is the plural of cantilever?
- The plural of cantilever is cantilevers.
Words near cantilever in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: cantilever (page history and authors); cantilever (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); cantilever (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors). 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:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-cantilever.wav.
Cite this entry: “cantilever.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/cantilever. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.