slaught-beam

English

Alternative forms

  • slaught-boom

Etymology

Probably a calque of Dutch slagboom or German Schlagbaum. These are etymologically equivalent to English slay +‎ beam, meaning a beam that can be banged (“slain”) down. The word slaught (related with slay) would have been chosen because it is phonetically closer to the continental words.

Alternatively it might be a phono-semantic matching of Dutch sluitboom, which has the same sense, but literally means “closing beam”. In this case, however, the etymological relation between the element slaught and the above-mentioned words would be a curious coincidence.

Pronunciation

  • (UK) IPA(key): /ˈslɔːt.biːm/

Noun

slaught-beam (plural slaught-beams)

  1. (obsolete, military) Barrier.
    Raise the slaught-beam.

References

This article is issued from Wiktionary. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.