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girder

UK/ˈɡɜːdə(ɹ)/US/ˈɡɝdɚ/
nounB2+Occasional — familiar, but not everyday · #11,304 of 15,258leans written

Other forms: girders

A girder is a great steel beam carrying a building's weight. Steel girders, a girder bridge, lift the girder into place.

The I-shape is not decoration: putting the metal at the top and bottom, far from the centre, is what makes a girder stiff for its weight. The famous photograph of men lunching on a girder over New York is of exactly this.

JKBrooks85 · Public domain

Definitions of girder

  1. 1noungirderA great steel beam carrying a building's weight.B2+

    “Cranes lifted the steel girders into place on the new tower.”

girder is a beam.

Where it comes from

  1. Proto-Indo-European

    *gʰerdʰ-

  2. Proto-Germanic

    *gurdijaną — to gird

  3. Old English

    gyrdan — to put a belt around, to put a girdle around

  4. Middle English

    girden

  5. English

    gird

  6. English, today

    girder

From gird + -er. gird comes from Middle English girden, gerden, gurden, from Old English gyrdan (“to put a belt around, to put a girdle around”), from Proto-Germanic gurdijaną (“to gird”), from Proto-Indo-European gʰerdʰ-. Cognate with West Frisian gurdzje, girdzje, Dutch gorden, German gürten, Swedish gjorda, Icelandic gyrða, Albanian ngërthej (“to tie together by weaving, to bind”).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Buildings & Architecture

Practise this word

girder in the wild

  • Such modern bridges include girder, plate girder, and box girder bridges, all of which are types of beam bridges.

    Beam bridge

  • The main beams could be I-beams, trusses, or box girders.

    Beam bridge

  • A plate girder bridge is a bridge supported by two or more plate girders.

    Plate girder bridge

  • A box girder bridge, or box section bridge, is a bridge in which the main beams comprise girders in the shape of a hollow box.

    Box girder bridge

  • Although the box girder bridge is normally a form of beam bridge, box girders may also be used on cable-stayed and other bridges.

    Box girder bridge

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

From Project Gutenberg, public domain. These sentences are from real books, shown to illustrate the word at work.

Related words

the gyrdan family

girdergird

girder — used about once every 8,568 pages · #11,304 · point at the bar for the others

  • girdle