Word.ws English Dictionary

slaught-beam

UK/ˈslɔːt.biːm/

slaught-beam noun: barrier.

slaught-beam: barrier
Image: Stefan-Xp, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

slaught-beam (plural slaught-beams)

  1. (obsolete) Barrier.
    • Raise the slaught-beam.

Forms of slaught-beam

pluralslaught-beams
alternative formslaught-boom

Origin of slaught-beam

Probably a calque of Dutch slagboom or German Schlagbaum. These are etymologically equivalent to English slay + beam, meaning a beam that can be banged (“slain”) down. The word slaught (related with slay) would have been chosen because it is phonetically closer to the continental words. Alternatively it might be a phono-semantic matching of Dutch sluitboom, which has the same sense, but literally means “closing beam”. In this case, however, the etymological relation between the element slaught and the above-mentioned words would be a curious coincidence.

Questions about slaught-beam

What does slaught-beam mean?
Slaught-beam means barrier.
What part of speech is slaught-beam?
Slaught-beam is a noun.
How do you pronounce slaught-beam?
Slaught-beam is pronounced /ˈslɔːt.biːm/ (UK).
What is the plural of slaught-beam?
The plural of slaught-beam is slaught-beams.

Words near slaught-beam in the dictionary

  1. slaty-grey snakes
  2. slaty-legged crake
  3. slaugh
  4. Slaughs
  5. slaught
  6. slaught-beam
  7. slaught-beams
  8. slaughter
  9. slaughterable
  10. slaughterbot
  11. slaughterbots

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: slaught-beam (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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