beam

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   A long, thick piece of wood or metal used to support a building or structure.

   Heavy wooden beams held up the roof of the old barn.

2. 2
   noun

   A line of light shining from something.

   A beam of sunlight came through the window.

3. 3
   verb

   To smile very happily.

   She beamed with joy when she heard the good news.

4. 4
   verb

   To send out light or to broadcast a signal.

   The flashlight beamed brightly into the dark room.

Appears in

Simplified etymology

Beam is an Old English word that originally denoted both a piece of wood and a tree, the latter sense surviving in hornbeam and whitebeam. Its nautical sense developed from the crosswise timbers supporting a ship’s deck and came to mean the ship’s greatest breadth in the early 17th century. The sense seen in beam of light and sunbeam is the same word, adopted from similar uses in Latin.

From Middle English beem, from Old English bēam (“tree, cross, gallows, column, pillar, wood, beam, splint, post, stock, rafter, piece of wood”), from Proto-West Germanic *baum, from Proto-Germanic *baumaz (“tree, beam, balk”), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰew- (“to grow, swell”). Cognate with North Frisian Boom, buum (“tree”), Saterland Frisian Boom (“tree”), West Frisian beam (“tree”), Cimbrian pome, póom, puam (“tree”), Dutch boom (“tree”), German Low German Boom (“tree”), German Baum (“tree”), Luxembourgish Bam (“tree”), Mòcheno pa'm (“tree”), Vilamovian baojm (“tree”), Yiddish בוים (boym, “…

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External links

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