PONTOON • E-FREE TRANSLATION.COM • Definition of Pontoon

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/pɑntˈun/ Listen

noun

Pontoon n.

(Mil.) A wooden flat-bottomed boat, a metallic cylinder, or a frame covered with canvas, India rubber, etc., forming a portable float, used in building bridges quickly for the passage of troops.

(Naut.) A low, flat vessel, resembling a barge, furnished with cranes, capstans, and other machinery, used in careening ships, raising weights, drawing piles, etc., chiefly in the Mediterranean; a lighter.

Pontoon bridge, a bridge formed with pontoons.

Pontoon train, the carriages of the pontoons, and the materials they carry for making a pontoon bridge. Note: The French spelling ponton often appears in scientific works, but pontoon is more common form.

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Etymology of 'Pontoon'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Pontoon" Quotes from Famous Books

... Earl of March, of the Duke of Exeter, of Sir John Talbot, and the Prior of Kilmaine. So that the total of the army that besieged Rouen was, at least, 45,000 men. This large force was brought across the Seine, partly by the old bridge of Pont de l'Arche, partly by a light and ingenious pontoon bridge made of planks supported on watertight leather boats, which could be packed up and carried with the ...

— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook

... comrades whispered to him that the Potomac, the barrier between North and South, was rising, flooded by heavy rains in both mountains and lowlands, and that a body of Northern cavalry had already destroyed a pontoon bridge built by the South across it. They might be hemmed in, with their backs to an unfordable river, and an enemy two or three times as numerous ...

— The Shades of the Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler

... thrown two pontoon bridges across, one above and one below the old railway bridge. The Mississippians have driven them back once, but they are pushing on the work and will soon get it finished; but General Barksdale bids me report that with the force at his command he can repulse any attempt ...

— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty

... and all baggage and munition for military use took up position in battle formation. In front lay an imaginary army, and we had to cross a river to come into contact with it. Engineers, under cover of the artillery, built pontoon bridges for our crossing; on the whole an intensely interesting and novel experience. So interesting indeed that I lost all count of time, and only came to consciousness of the clock and remembrance of friends making ready for dinner when some one remarked that ...

— The Amateur Army • Patrick MacGill

... must be accomplished in a scant two hours, was to lay a pontoon bridge across an indentation of the Hudson River, this indentation being a few hundred feet across, and representing, in theory, an ...

— Dick Prescotts's Fourth Year at West Point - Ready to Drop the Gray for Shoulder Straps • H. Irving Hancock

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