Other forms: trestles
A trestle is a folding support that holds up a board to make a table. Trestle tables, set up the trestles, a board on two trestles.
The classic shape is a bar on four splayed legs, and a pair of them plus a plank is the standard table for a village hall, a jumble sale or a decorating job. A trestle table is the fixed phrase and is what most people meet the word in. In construction and railways, a trestle bridge is one carried on a row of braced frames — a common form in nineteenth-century America and still the technical term.
1nountrestleA folding support holding up a board or table top.
“Two trestles and a door make a perfectly good desk.”
2nounbracedA braced frame supporting a bridge.
“The old trestle carried the line across the valley.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
trestle is a support.
Old French trestel comes from Latin transtrum, a crossbeam — the beam that goes across a boat between the sides. The trestle keeps the crossbeam's job: something laid across supports to carry a load.
Latin
trānstellum
Old French
trestel — crossbeam
Middle English
trestel
English, today
trestle
From Middle English trestel, from Old French trestel (“crossbeam”) (French tréteau), from Latin trānstellum, diminutive of trānstrum.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA