cantilever

Etymology

First attested in the 1660s, probably from cant (“slope”) + lever, but the earliest form (c. 1610) was cantlapper. First element may also be Spanish can (“dog”), an architect's term for an end of timber jutting out of a wall, on which beams rested.

noun

1. (architecture) A beam anchored at one end and projecting into space, such as a long bracket projecting from a wall to support a balcony.
   Eventually Sir John Fowler's and Sir Benjamin Baker's continuous steel girder bridge on the cantilever principle was adopted. 1941 January, the late John Phillimore, “The Forth Bridge 1890-1940”, in Railway Magazine, page 5
   He loved Litchfield, Sharon, Williamsburg; he preferred the Georgian, and he had theories about developing a truly American style. He was called a plodder by all the Kivis, and in turn he disliked their bleak blocks of Modernist cement, their glass-fronted hen-houses, their architectural spiders with cantilever claws. 1951, Sinclair Lewis, World So Wide, Chapter
   The plank along which pirates made their victims walk was a cantilever. So is a diving board. As you walk along the plank, the unsupported ends dips [sic]. It's possible to arrange for two cantilevers to be connected at their unsupported ends, which would let you seamlessly cross from one cantilever to the other while also distributing your weight across both fixed ends. May 3 2023, Philip Haigh, “The art and science of building bridges”, in RAIL, number 982, page 40
2. A beam anchored at one end and used as a lever within a microelectromechanical system.
3. (figure skating) A technique, similar to the spread eagle, in which the skater travels along a deep edge with knees bent and bends their back backwards, parallel to the ice.

verb

1. To project (something) in the manner of or by means of a cantilever.
   Just above, the museums top floor seems to shift slightly, its corners cantilevering over the edge of the story below as if it is sliding off the top of the building. October 28, 2007, Nicolai Ouroussoff, “Where Gods Yearn for Long-Lost Treasures”, in New York Times