Babbitt definitions and example sentences on Wordnik

“

The object of adding antimony to an alloy is to prevent shrinkage when cooling A very economical alloy is made by melting up all the old type-metal, babbitt, battery zincs, white metal and other scrap available, and adding a little antimony if the metal shrinks too much in cooling.

—The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 700 Things for Boys to Do

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Definitions (3)

American Heritage Dictionary

Century Dictionary

GNU Webster's 1913 (1)

To line with Babbitt metal.

WordNet (2)

an alloy of tin with some copper and antimony; a lining for bearings that reduces friction
line with a Babbitt metal

Elsewhere on the web

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Examples (25)

Yes, babbitt ... cheap, easy, easy to install, and they work good enough.
Poured and hand scraped babbitt bearings were really old machine technology back into the 19th century.
Also the soft babbitt had this wonderful ability to embed hard solid wear debris so it would be less abrasive to a rotating shaft.
I have a 1928 book by Boswall that lays out all the differential equations solving enough of them to give engineers some real confidence for designing bearings that could carry such high unit loads that thick babbitt would deform and fail.
The value of babbitt with respect to its ability to embed particles that would otherwise cause crankshaft wear was still important to many mechanics.