A cantilever is a girder or beam that supports a bridge or another large structure. Cantilevers are attached only at one end, like a rigid diving board.

Structures that stick out sideways from a vertical support are cantilevers (hold your arm straight out from your body and it becomes a kind of cantilever). Engineers construct bridges using cantilevers, balancing them with counterweights or reinforcing them with girders and trusses. Cantilever bridges were originally called cantlapper bridges—from cant, or "slope," eventually combined with lever, from the Latin levare, "to raise."

Definitions of cantilever

n projecting horizontal beam fixed at one end only

Type of:

v construct with girders and beams such that only one end is fixed

“Frank Lloyd Wright liked to cantilever his buildings”
Type of:
build, construct, make
make by combining materials and parts

v project as a cantilever

Type of:
jut, jut out, project, protrude, stick out
extend out or project in space

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