PONTOON • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Pontoon

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/pɑntˈun/ Listen

noun

Pontoon n.

(Mil.) A wooden flat-bottomed boat, a metallic cylinder, or a frame covered with canvas, India rubber, etc., forming a portable float, used in building bridges quickly for the passage of troops.

(Naut.) A low, flat vessel, resembling a barge, furnished with cranes, capstans, and other machinery, used in careening ships, raising weights, drawing piles, etc., chiefly in the Mediterranean; a lighter.

Pontoon bridge, a bridge formed with pontoons.

Pontoon train, the carriages of the pontoons, and the materials they carry for making a pontoon bridge. Note: The French spelling ponton often appears in scientific works, but pontoon is more common form.

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Etymology of 'Pontoon'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Pontoon" Quotes from Famous Books

... the hill on which Kershaw was stationed and that of Mayree's. Daylight was yet some hours off when we took position, but we could hear the rattle of the guns of Barksdale's Mississippians, whose turn it was to be on picket in the city, driving off the enemy's pontoon corps and ...

— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert

... field-guns, ambulances with staring red crosses painted on their canvas tops, then gigantic siege-guns, their grim muzzles pointing skyward, each drawn by thirty straining horses; engineers, sappers and miners with picks and spades, pontoon-wagons, carts piled high with what looked like masses of yellow silk but which proved to be balloons, bicyclists with carbines slung upon their backs hunter-fashion, aeroplane outfits, bearded and spectacled doctors of ...

— Fighting in Flanders • E. Alexander Powell

... of Thursday, the 10th inst., the first act in the great drama commenced with laying the pontoon bridges over which our men were to make their way into the rebel city. My own division was to cross directly opposite the city. All honor to the brave men who volunteered to lay the bridges. It was a trying and perilous duty. On the other side, ...

— Frank's Campaign - or the Farm and the Camp • Horatio Alger, Jr.

... can lay a pontoon bridge, and he has a great artillery to protect it. The river, as you know, sir, has a width of about two hundred yards at Fredericksburg, and the Northern batteries ...

— The Star of Gettysburg - A Story of Southern High Tide • Joseph A. Altsheler

... in this gallery are far above those mentioned in the Tito gallery. In fact there are so many other good pictures that a mere mention of names must suffice. From the Ciardi group on toward the right, Guido Marussig's "Walled City", Italico Brass' "Pontoon Bridge", and particularly Scattola's "Venice" are all worthy of comment. Scattola's picture is very sensitively studied, discreetly painted and full of the poetry of a summer night. Before leaving the Italian ...

— The Galleries of the Exposition • Eugen Neuhaus

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