Cantilever Meaning
/ˈkantɪliːvə/Definition, CEFR level C1, pronunciation, examples, and quiz.
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Definition
nounA beam anchored at one end and projecting into space, such as a long bracket projecting from a wall to support a balcony.
nounA beam anchored at one end and projecting into space, such as a long bracket projecting from a wall to support a balcony., A beam anchored at one end and used as a lever within a microelectromechanical system.
Sentence Examples
The architect designed a cantilever roof.
The bridge had a long cantilever span.
The bridge features a cantilever design that extends over the river.
CEFR Practice Quiz
The bridge's ____ extends horizontally, supported only at one end without external bracing.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
The modern house has a large ____ roof that hangs over the porch.
Word Origin & History
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.
Literary Quotations & Historical Citations
"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:
"He loved Litchfield, Sharon, Williamsburg; he preferred the Georgian, and he had theories about developing a truly American style. 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 underframe, which has been designed to take buffing loads of 200 tons both on the centre coupler and on the retractable side buffers, consists of two centre girders from which cantilevers project to support the solebars, which in turn carry the bodyside structure."
— 1951 May, “British Railways Standard Coaches”, in Railway Magazine, page 327:
"The service stairs were next to the main stairs, separated only by a wall, but what a difference there was between them: the narrow back stairs, dangerously unrailed, under the bleak gleam of a skylight, each step worn down to a steep hollow, turned tightly in a deep grey shaft; whereas the great main sweep, a miracle of cantilevers, dividing and joining again, was hung with the portraits of prince-bishops, and had ears of corn in its wrought-iron banisters that trembled to the tread."
— 2004, Alan Hollinghurst, chapter 10, in The Line of Beauty […], London: Picador, →ISBN:
"The plank along which pirates made their victims walk was a cantilever. So is a diving board. As you walk along the plank, the unsupported ends dips ^([sic]). It's possible to arrange for two cantilevers to be connected at their unsupported ends, which would let you seamlessly cross from one cantilever to the other while also distributing your weight across both fixed ends."
— 2023 May 3, Philip Haigh, “The art and science of building bridges”, in RAIL, number 982, page 40:
Explore More C1 Vocabulary Words
CEFR Practice Quiz
The bridge's ____ extends horizontally, supported only at one end without external bracing.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
The modern house has a large ____ roof that hangs over the porch.