Other forms: bollards
A bollard is a short thick post stopping vehicles going somewhere. Hit a bollard, a row of bollards, a rising bollard.
The rising kind sinks into the road to let buses through and has famously destroyed a number of cars that followed too closely. On a quay a bollard is what a ship's rope is looped over.
1nounbollardA short thick post stopping vehicles going somewhere.
“The council put bollards at the end of the street to stop cars driving into the square.”
bollard is a post.
Probably from bole, a tree trunk, from Old Norse bolr.
Middle English
bollard
English, today
bollard
From Middle English bollard, probably from Middle English bole (“tree trunk”), from Old Norse bolr (“stump, trunk”), equivalent to bole + -ard.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA