joist
/d͡ʒɔɪst/
joist noun: a piece of timber or steel laid horizontally, or nearly so, to which the planks of the floor, or the laths or furring strips of a ceiling, are nailed.
Noun
joist (plural joists)
- A piece of timber or steel laid horizontally, or nearly so, to which the planks of the floor, or the laths or furring strips of a ceiling, are nailed.
- […] a Family was infected there, in so terrible a Manner that every one of the House died; the last Person lay dead on the Floor, and as it is supposed, had laid her self all along to die just before the Fire; the Fire, it seems had fallen from its Place, being of Wood, and had taken hold of the...1722, Daniel Defoe, A Journal of the Plague Year, London: E. Nutt et al., page 190
- There are generally forty-two teeth in all; in old whales, much worn down, but undecayed; nor filled after our artificial fashion. The jaw is afterwards sawn into slabs, and piled away like joists for building houses.1851 November 14, Herman Melville, chapter 74, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC
Verb
joist (third-person singular simple present joists, present participle joisting, simple past and past participle joisted)
- To fit or furnish with joists.
- The floors are joisted with sapling tree trunks, and the flooring itself is made of bark, split and pounded flat into strips. No attempt is made either to fasten or join the strips of flooring.2001, David Pickell, Between the Tides: A Fascinating Journey Among the Kamoro of New Guinea, revised edition, Hong Kong: Periplus, published 2002, Chapter Four, page 112
joist meaning in Tamil, Urdu, Bengali and Malayalam
joist in Tamil
- தள குறுக்குக் கட்டை, வாரை, விட்டம், உத்திரம், திராவி, சிறுவிட்டம்
joist in Urdu
- افقی شہتیر
joist in Bengali
- ছাদের কড়ি
joist in Malayalam
- ചെറുവിട്ടം, തുലാം, കുറുക്കുചട്ടം
More languagesFewer languages
- joist in Kannada
- ದೂಲ, ಜಂತಿ, ಜಂತೆ, ಅಡ್ಡತೊಲೆ
- joist in Sanskrit
- वंश vaṃśá
- joist in Malay
- gelegar, jeliau
Examples of joist in a sentence
- In the middle of this broad and fantastically carved joist there was an old painting representing a cat playing rackets.1895, Honoré de Balzac, translated by Clara Bell, At the Sign of the Cat and Racket, London: J.M. Dent, published 1842, page 17:
- The new partitions were hung to the joists by a few nails.1923, Willa Cather, One of Ours, Book Four, Chapter 6:
- Once the floor joists were in position, the framing of the next storey could continue, with a bressummer laid along their ends.1986, R. J. Brown, Timber-Framed Buildings of England, London: R. Hale, →ISBN, page 63:
Forms of joist
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | joists |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | joists |
| present participle | joisting |
| past participle | joisted |
| past | joisted |
Origin of joist
From Old French giste, feminine of gist, the past participle of gesir (“to lie down”).
Words formed from joist
- binding joist
- bridging joist
- ceiling joist
- floor joist
- interjoist
- joistless
- joistlike
- rejoist
- trimming joist
- two-way joist slab
Phrases with joist
Words that rhyme with joist
Questions about joist
- What does joist mean?
- Joist means a piece of timber or steel laid horizontally, or nearly so, to which the planks of the floor, or the laths or furring strips of a ceiling, are nailed.
- What is joist in Tamil?
- Joist in Tamil is தள குறுக்குக் கட்டை, வாரை, விட்டம். See Joist meaning in Tamil.
- How do you use joist in a sentence?
- In the middle of this broad and fantastically carved joist there was an old painting representing a cat playing rackets.
- What part of speech is joist?
- Joist can be a noun or a verb.
- How do you pronounce joist?
- Joist is pronounced /d͡ʒɔɪst/.
- What is the plural of joist?
- The plural of joist is joists.
Words near joist in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: joist (page history and authors); joist (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); joist (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); joist (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); joist (Malayalam Wiktionary) (page history and authors); joist (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors); वंश (Sanskrit) (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.
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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-joist.wav.
Cite this entry: “joist.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/joist. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.