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Truss   /trəs/   Listen
noun
Truss  n.  
1.
A bundle; a package; as, a truss of grass. "Bearing a truss of trifles at his back." Note: A truss of hay in England is 56 lbs. of old and 60 lbs. of new hay; a truss of straw is 36 lbs.
2.
A padded jacket or dress worn under armor, to protect the body from the effects of friction; also, a part of a woman's dress; a stomacher. (Obs.) "Puts off his palmer's weed unto his truss, which bore The stains of ancient arms."
3.
(Surg.) A bandage or apparatus used in cases of hernia, to keep up the reduced parts and hinder further protrusion, and for other purposes.
4.
(Bot.) A tuft of flowers formed at the top of the main stalk, or stem, of certain plants.
5.
(Naut.) The rope or iron used to keep the center of a yard to the mast.
6.
(Arch. & Engin.) An assemblage of members of wood or metal, supported at two points, and arranged to transmit pressure vertically to those points, with the least possible strain across the length of any member. Architectural trusses when left visible, as in open timber roofs, often contain members not needed for construction, or are built with greater massiveness than is requisite, or are composed in unscientific ways in accordance with the exigencies of style.
Truss rod, a rod which forms the tension member of a trussed beam, or a tie rod in a truss.



verb
Truss  v. t.  (past & past part. trussed; pres. part. trussing)  
1.
To bind or pack close; to tie up tightly; to make into a truss. "It (his hood) was trussed up in his wallet."
2.
To take fast hold of; to seize and hold firmly; to pounce upon. (Obs.) "Who trussing me as eagle doth his prey."
3.
To strengthen or stiffen, as a beam or girder, by means of a brace or braces.
4.
To skewer; to make fast, as the wings of a fowl to the body in cooking it.
5.
To execute by hanging; to hang; usually with up. (Slang.)
To truss a person or To truss one's self, to adjust and fasten the clothing of; especially, to draw tight and tie the laces of garments. (Obs.) "Enter Honeysuckle, in his nightcap, trussing himself."
To truss up, to strain; to make close or tight.
Trussed beam, a beam which is stiffened by a system of braces constituting a truss of which the beam is a chord.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Truss" Quotes from Famous Books



... blisterous Yorkshire pudding, bubbling hot in a similar receptacle, of a stuffed fillet of veal in rapid cut, of a ham in a perspiration with the pace it was going at, of a shallow tank of baked potatoes glued together by their own richness, of a truss or two of boiled greens, and other substantial delicacies. Within, were a few wooden partitions, behind which such customers as found it more convenient to take away their dinners in stomachs than in their hands, Packed their purchases in solitude. Fanny opening her reticule, as ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens

... irregular flowers those nearest to the axis are most subject to peloria, that is to become abnormally symmetrical. I may add, as an instance of this fact, and as a striking case of correlation, that in many pelargoniums the two upper petals in the central flower of the truss often lose their patches of darker colour; and when this occurs, the adherent nectary is quite aborted, the central flower thus becoming peloric or regular. When the colour is absent from only one of the two upper petals, the nectary is not quite ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin

... ones who have relentlessly chased God out of their bedrooms; to the moral ones who cringe before Nature, who flatten themselves upon prayer rugs, who shut their eyes, stuff their ears, bind, gag and truss themselves and offer their mutilations to the idiot God they have invented (the Devil take them, I grow bored with laughing at them); to the anointed ones who identify their paranoic symptoms as virtues, who build altars upon complexes; to the anointed ones who have slain themselves and who ...
— Fantazius Mallare - A Mysterious Oath • Ben Hecht

... the king, and heaven's great father heard His vows, in bitterness of soul preferr'd: The wrath appeased, by happy signs declares, And gives the people to their monarch's prayers. His eagle, sacred bird of heaven! he sent, A fawn his talons truss'd, (divine portent!) High o'er the wondering hosts he soar'd above, Who paid their vows to Panomphaean Jove; Then let the prey before his altar fall; The Greeks beheld, and transport seized on all: Encouraged by the sign, the troops revive, And fierce on Troy with doubled fury ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer

... The scene a blanket, and a barn the globe: No high conceits their moderate wishes raise, Content with humble profit, humble praise. Let dowdies simper, and let bumpkins stare, 240 The strolling pageant hero treads in air: Pleased, for his hour he to mankind gives law, And snores the next out on a truss of straw. But if kind Fortune, who sometimes, we know, Can take a hero from a puppet-show, In mood propitious should her favourite call, On royal stage in royal pomp to bawl, Forgetful of himself, he rears the head, And scorns the dunghill where he first was bred; Conversing now with ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill


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