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truss

UK/tɹʌs/US/tɹʌs/
nounC1Occasional — familiar, but not everyday · #11,773 of 15,258leans written

Other forms: trusses

A truss is a rigid triangle of beams that spans a wide roof. A roof truss, a steel truss, truss bridge.

The triangle is the whole point: it is the only shape that cannot be pushed out of square without changing the length of a side, so a frame built from them is rigid with very little material. A truss is also a medical support for a hernia.

Image by en:User:Leonard G. · Public domain

Definitions of truss

  1. 1nountrussA rigid triangle of beams that spans a wide roof.C1

    “The carpenters lifted the wooden trusses onto the walls to hold up the roof.”

truss is a frame.

Where it comes from

Old French trousse means a bundle, from a Latin word meaning twisted. Trousseau is a relative.

  1. Proto-Indo-European

    *terkʷ-

  2. la-cla

    tortus

  3. Vulgar Latin

    *torsus

  4. Old French

    trousse

  5. Middle English

    trusse

  6. English, today

    truss

From Middle English trusse, from Old French trousse, torse, from Vulgar Latin torsus, variant of la-cla tortus, past participle of torqueō. a doublet of torse and trousse.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Buildings & Architecture

Practise this word

truss in the wild

  • A truss is an assembly of members such as beams, connected by nodes, that creates a rigid structure.

    Truss

  • A planar truss is one where all members and nodes lie within a two-dimensional plane, while a space frame has members and nodes that extend into three dimensions.

    Truss

  • There are several types of truss bridges, including some with simple designs that were among the first bridges designed in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

    Truss bridge

  • A timber roof truss is a structural framework of timbers designed to bridge the space above a room and to provide support for a roof.

    Timber roof truss

  • The space between each truss is known as a bay.

    Timber roof truss

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.

Related words

the tortus family

trusstortuous

truss — used about once every 10,067 pages · #11,773 · point at the bar for the others