the.com/ballast
the unglamorous weight that keeps ships, balloons, and bridges from making fatal scenes
means Heavy material—stones, water, sand, or gravel—carried low in a ship, balloon, or structure to keep it stable, or by extension anything that steadies and grounds.
from From a Low German or Scandinavian seafaring word, likely combining a root meaning 'bare' or 'mere' with 'last' meaning 'load'—so literally a 'bare load,' cargo carried only for weight, not profit. It sailed into English from the Baltic and North Sea trade, where empty ships needed something dead and heavy in the hold to keep from tipping. The stone-and-gravel sense later gave its name to the crushed rock under railway tracks.
- ship origin
- From Old Norse meaning bare useless load
- dumped fast
- Balloonists toss it overboard to climb
- invasive smuggler
- Ship ballast water spreads species across oceans
- railway bones
- Crushed stone ballast holds train tracks in place
- electric kind
- Fluorescent lights need a ballast to survive
titanic's ballast tanks — ship's compartments that flooded during the 1912 sinking, contributing to its instability
railroad ballast stone — crushed rock layer under railway tracks worldwide, typically limestone or granite
fluorescent ballast — electrical device that regulates current in fluorescent lamps, standard in offices before leds