Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use ballast in a sentence

27 example sentences · noun, verb

Ballast means heavy material that is placed in the hold of a ship (or in the gondola of a balloon), to provide stability. Example: “Each fluorescent troffer in the room contained three lamps and two ballasts.”

Examples of ballast by meaning

nounHeavy material that is placed in the hold of a ship (or in the gondola of a balloon), to provide stability.

  • “Oh, for the-- how much did you waste on that little boondoggle?” “Well, it's not that so much as--” “Krieger.” “Well, I needed ballast, and what better to simulate bricks of cocaine than, you know, bricks of cocaine.”2014 March 24, Adam Reed, “On the Carpet” (18:15 from the start), in Archer, season 5, episode 9, spoken by Dr. Algernop Krieger (Lucky...

nounThat which gives, or helps to maintain, uprightness, steadiness, and security.

  • With 73 minutes gone Rafael Márquez came on to add ballast at the back, appearing in his fifth World Cup aged 39 and with alleged links to drug trafficking, which he denies, on hold for now.2018 June 17, Barney Ronay, “Mexico’s Hirving Lozano stuns world champions Germany for brilliant win”, in Katharine Viner, editor, The...

verbTo lay ballast on the bed of a railroad track.

  • Although the track is ballasted, it does not prevent clouds of reddish dust from the laterite soil blowing about when the train is in motion; after a journey with the windows open a bath is a necessity!1948 September and October, W. S. Darby, “The Gold Coast Railway—1”, in Railway Magazine, page 287

More sentences with ballast

  • Each fluorescent troffer in the room contained three lamps and two ballasts.From the entry troffer
  • The submarine blew its main ballast tanks.From the entry blow
  • The ship was ballasted up with sand and rocks.From the entry ballast up
  • The workers ballasted up the tracks last month.From the entry ballast up
  • Flash flooding removed ballast, leaving sections of track suspended in the air.2019 November 6, “Flash floods close Marches Line in Wales”, in Rail, page 13. From the entry flash flooding
  • The first wagon's sides are literally bulging at the seams with ballast spoil.2018, Andy Gibbs, The Southern Region in the 1970s and 1980s, Amberley Publishing →ISBN, page 12, photo caption. From the entry secondman
  • A backup method for the spin recovery parachute system is jettisonable ballast.2003, Ralph D. Kimberlin, chapter 34, in Flight Testing of Fixed-Wing Aircraft, →ISBN, page 406. From the entry jettisonable
  • You can't stop it, but rock armour slows it to a point where it doesn't wash ballast or embankment material away."2020 August 26, Andrew Mourant, “Reinforced against future flooding”, in Rail, pages 59–60. From the entry rock armour
  • But the mineral-rich blood is what gives the stew its ballast and faintly metallic hint of a licked knife.2018 March 12, Ligaya Mishan, “Filipino Food Finds a Place in the American Mainstream”, in The New York Times, New York, N.Y.: The New…. From the entry licked
  • Another spray of ballast came, heavier than the last.2010, Scott Westerfeld, Leviathan. From the entry steady
  • If stowed in MBTs, solid ballast will reduce the blowable volume and so affect the reserve of buoyancy.1995, Roy Burcher, Louis J. Rydill, Concepts in Submarine Design. From the entry blowable
  • The Yngling is highly stable, with a beam-to-waterline ratio of .37 and with 50 percent of the weight in ballast.1994, Richard Sherwood, A Field Guide to Sailboats of North America, page 108. From the entry yngling
  • This could not be applied to the forepack ballast tank but this will be generally operated at a fixed level.1993, Proceedings - Offshore Technology Conference. From the entry forepack
  • Successive falls of snow had thawed, or partially thawed, seeped into the ballast and, as temperatures dropped again, refrozen.1964 April, Warren Smith, “The Midland's accelerated timetable—the first year—II”, in Modern Railways, page 243. From the entry refreeze
  • These bridges are not at present suitable for carrying ballasted tracks and are in any case approaching renewal age.1957 October, “Notes and News: Manchester-Crewe Electrification”, in Railway Magazine, page 734. From the entry ballasted
  • He failed to appreciate the danger of disturbing the track, short of ballast, on a very hot day.1950 March, “Notes and News: Merstham Quarry Derailment”, in Railway Magazine, page 210. From the entry ganger
  • Stone ballast is now used throughout the main line, and has the additional advantage of eliminating the previous bugbear of dust.1940 November, O. S. M. Raw, “The Rhodesia Railways—I”, in Railway Magazine, page 592. From the entry bugbear
  • There is so much dust released during the process of laying ballast that the trackside operator wears a full face mask with respirator.2022 September 7, “East-West track laying heads westwards”, in RAIL, number 965, page 37, photo caption. From the entry dust
  • Jointed track will be replaced, with standard ballast instead of shingle beneath, to stabilise the rails and improve the notoriously dreadful ride quality.2021 January 13, Paul Clifton, “Island Line bids farewell to 1930s "icon of transport"...”, in Rail, pages 8–9. From the entry jointed
  • An unusual case cropped up when an American Liberty, the Josiah Nelson Cushing, ran ashore at Breaker Point near Swatow, while in ballast.1976, W. A. Doust, Peter Black, “Scrap into Skyscrapers”, in The Ocean on a Plank, London: Seely, Service & Co. Ltd, →ISBN, →OCLC, page 112. From the entry Breaker Point
  • "The closed-deck ballasted bridge is double-tracked and opens up to a third track through a combination diamond-crossover and double-slip switch before it reaches the bulkhead on the Hoboken side."2002 August, Paul Jannotti, “Thinking outside the box on light rail: Hudson-Bergen project”, in Railway Track and Structures. From the entry diamond crossover
  • Secured with ballast of repartee, we drifted past murky, shallow waters of literary knawvshawl and found ourselves navigating a course I can't recall we ever traversed.1999, “The Leper and Civil Disobedience”, in Fortnight, numbers 376-390. From the entry knawvshawl
  • The amount of ballast in each fusegate and the elevation of the intake well determine the pool elevation at which a fusegate will tip, that is, rotate downstream.1990, Golden State Floodlight: California Floodplain Management Newsletter, page 70. From the entry fusegate
  • During the track renewals, advantage was taken to redrain the area and the old spent ballast was removed down to the underlying rock, new ballast and drains being provided throughout.1950 January, “Re-Signalling at Liverpool Lime Street Station”, in Railway Magazine, page 43. From the entry underlying

Meaning of ballast

  1. noun Heavy material that is placed in the hold of a ship (or in the gondola of a balloon), to provide stability.
  2. noun Anything that steadies emotion or the mind.
  3. noun Coarse gravel or similar material laid to form a bed for roads or railroads, or in making concrete; track ballast.

Full definition of ballast

Questions about ballast in a sentence

How do you use ballast in a sentence?
Ballast is used as a noun and verb. For example: “Each fluorescent troffer in the room contained three lamps and two ballasts.”
What is a short sentence with ballast?
“The submarine blew its main ballast tanks.”
What does ballast mean?
Ballast means heavy material that is placed in the hold of a ship (or in the gondola of a balloon), to provide stability.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: ballast (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this page: “How to use ballast in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/ballast. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.