beam
Any large piece of timber or iron long in proportion to its thickness, and prepared for use.
Other meanings
One of the principal horizontal structural members, usually of steel, timber, or concrete, of a building.
One of the transverse members of a ship's frame on which the decks are laid, and acting as part of the support for keeping the sides of the vessel in shape — supported at the sides by knees in wooden ships and by stringers in steel ones; cf. abeam, beam-ends.
Example sentences
Word history
From Old English "bēam".
Where this comes from
This definition is adapted from “beam” on Wiktionary, by its contributors; example sentences are from Tatoeba, credited to their authors above, published under CC BY-SA 4.0. This page is published under the same licence.