Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A tropical American tree (Ochroma pyramidale) having soft wood that is very light in weight and is used as a substitute for cork in insulation, floats, and crafts such as model airplanes.
- noun The wood of this tree.
- noun A raft consisting of a frame fastened to buoyant cylinders of wood or metal.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun The native name of the Ochroma Lagopus, a bombaceous tree common in the forests upon the coasts of tropical America.
- noun A kind of raft or float much used on the west coast of South America for crossing lakes or rivers, for landing through the surf, and by fishermen.
- noun On Lake Titicaca, an aboriginal flat-bottomed boat or canoe, sometimes capable of conveying as many as 30 persons or a dozen donkeys.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun (Naut.) A raft or float, used principally on the Pacific coast of South America.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun A large tree, Ochroma lagopus, native to tropical
America , with wood that is very light in weight. - noun uncountable The
wood of this tree. - noun A
raft orfloat , used principally on the Pacific coast of South America.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun forest tree of lowland Central America having a strong very light wood; used for making floats and rafts and in crafts
- noun strong lightweight wood of the balsa tree used especially for floats
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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Cuban martyrdom is not new - whether we speak of those Don Quixotes who took up arms against the revolution early on, the many would-be Mandelas who rotted in prison or the families who perished on boats fleeing the island, giving a moral meaning to the Spanish word balsa "(raft).
The Globe and Mail - Home RSS feed Alvaro Vargas Llosa 2010
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Cuban martyrdom is not new - whether we speak of those Don Quixotes who took up arms against the revolution early on, the many would-be Mandelas who rotted in prison or the families who perished on boats fleeing the island, giving a moral meaning to the Spanish word balsa "(raft).
The Globe and Mail - Home RSS feed Alvaro Vargas Llosa 2010
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Cuban martyrdom is not new - whether we speak of those Don Quixotes who took up arms against the revolution early on, the many would-be Mandelas who rotted in prison or the families who perished on boats fleeing the island, giving a moral meaning to the Spanish word balsa "(raft).
The Globe and Mail - Home RSS feed Alvaro Vargas Llosa 2010
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Taking a little float of reeds, called a balsa, they work their way outside the heavy rollers, then watch their opportunity and get their balsa pointed in towards the
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This is the kind of balsa-wood backstory that is knocked into Hollywood plots every day. as tidy and punctual as postage stamps
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This is the kind of balsa-wood backstory that is knocked into Hollywood plots every day. as tidy and punctual as postage stamps
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This is the kind of balsa-wood backstory that is knocked into Hollywood plots every day. as tidy and punctual as postage stamps
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The thin wire runs parallel to and above a length of aluminum foil, with the two attached and held apart by a lightweight nonconductor such as balsa wood.
MAKE Magazine 2009
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I used thirty-second of an inch balsa for a lot of applications, especially as it could be scribed into weatherboards (clapboard siding?) and with care into corrugated iron and provided it was painted with an oil based paint the scribed indentations became permanent.
Coyote Blog » Blog Archive » Unexpected Problem – Finding Non Fluorescent White Paper 2009
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"By age 9, I had acquired a fairly serious addiction to balsa wood and glue," he wrote in an autobiographical sketch.
The Lindbergh of Hobbyists Stephen Miller 2011
chained_bear commented on the word balsa
I knew this word from childhood as a kind of wood my brother used in model airplanes, and figured it was a tree. But I never heard it used to denote a type of boat:
"'There is as odd a craft as you can possibly imagine, a balsa, I think, sailing in the strangest way... the poor soul seems to be entangled in his sheet...'"
--P. O'Brian, The Wine-Dark Sea, 222
March 16, 2008
reesetee commented on the word balsa
I've never heard it used that way either, c_b. Thanks for adding it to "Out to Sea." :-)
March 17, 2008