ballast

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“
The day after the ballast was all in and trimmed, orders were given to unmoor, and the little craft sailed out of the harbour with a fine southerly wind and all sail set.

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Definitions (29)

Toggle American Heritage definitions American Heritage Dictionary (6)

  1. noun Heavy material that is placed in the hold of a ship or the gondola of a balloon to enhance stability.
  2. noun Coarse gravel or crushed rock laid to form a bed for roads or railroads.
  3. noun The gravel ingredient of concrete.
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Toggle GNU Webster definitions GNU Webster's 1913 (2)

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Examples (50)

  • One benefit of cutting the big holes in the frosted plastic cover right below the ballast is that it lets me shoot the temperature with the Fluke 80T-IR any time I feel like it.
  • But if they replace the fluorescent, they use as little or less electricity and since the ballast is not a big air-gap transformer but a switching power supply, let us hope the LED lamp ballast will not fail every five years.
  • The patented Axis Dimming / Daylight Harvesting Ballast is a new technology that transforms the ballast, a once standard lighting industry staple, into a dynamic energy-saving system that can reduce lighting energy costs by up to 70\%. —  RushPRnews - Newswire & Global Press Release Distribution
  • The tubes are sealed using a tipping machine and the electrical components such as the ballast are soldered with the tubes —  Down To Earth
  • The key mechanism on any fluorescent light is the ballast, a device that controls the current through the light.
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This word has been looked up 107 times.

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Etymologies (3)

Toggle American Heritage etymologies American Heritage Dictionary (1)

  1. Perhaps from Old Swedish or Old Danish barlast : bar, mere, bare; see bhoso- in Indo-European roots + last, load.

Toggle Century etymologies Century Dictionary (2)

  1. Early modern English also balast, balest, balist, and, with loss of t, ballas, ballass, ballasse, ballace, ballesse, balase, etc. (not in Middle English), = French balast = German ballast (later Polish balast = Russian balastǔ, ballastǔ), from Old Low German Low German Friesic D. ballast, Flemish ballas, Danish ballast, Swedish ballast, barlast, Old Swedish Old Danish barlast, the last being apparently the orig. form, from bar = English bare, mere, + last = English last, load or weight; but the first element is uncertain. The Danish baglast, ‘back-load,’ D. obsolete balglast, ‘belly-load,’ appear to be due to popular etymology. The explanation of ballast as from Middle Low German bal-, = Anglo-Saxon balu, bad, evil (see bale), + last, load, that is, unprofitable cargo, is not satisfactory.
  2. Early modern English also balast, and, with loss of t, ballas (preterit and past participle ballased, sometimes ballast, present participle ballasing), ballasse, ballace, balase, etc., = G. D. Flemish Low German ballasten = Danish ballaste, baglaste = Swedish barlasta; from the noun.
 

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/ˈbæləst/
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