bearing

Pluralbearings

1. 1
   nouncountable

   A mechanical part that supports a moving component and reduces friction between surfaces.

   Mechanics packed fresh grease into the wheel bearing before reassembly.

   The motor failed when one of its bearings seized under heavy load.

   Note

   Machinery's sense of the word is the part a shaft or wheel turns in, whether it rolls on balls or rollers or rides on a film of lubricant. It is countable and usually named by its place, as in a wheel bearing. Like the other nouns, it comes from Middle English bering, the act of bearing. The name says what the part does: it carries a load while letting motion through.

2. 2
   nouncountable or uncountable

   Relevance to a matter; a connection or relationship by which one thing affects another.

   The witness's testimony had no bearing on the final verdict.

   Economic trends have a direct bearing on consumer confidence.

   Similareffect, impact, influence, relevance

   Note

   The sense that lives in arguments and rulings: a fact has a bearing on a matter, or, very often, has no bearing on it. The preposition is on or upon. Alexander Pope's Essay on Man (1733) uses the plural for the 'bearings and the ties' of a whole frame, the connections and dependencies that hold a system together.

3. 3
   nouncountableplural

   An awareness of one's position and orientation, whether physically in space or figuratively within a situation.

   New to the company, he struggled to find his bearings during the first week.

   The hikers lost their bearings when fog rolled over the trail.

   Similarorientation

   Note

   Nearly always plural and nearly always inside a phrase: you get, find or lose your bearings. It is the navigator's measurement turned inward, the sense of where you stand at an unfamiliar junction or in a new job. Keep the final s, because a singular bearing tends to read as a compass reading or as demeanor.

4. 4
   nouncountable

   The horizontal angle between the direction of an object and true north or another reference point; a heading.

   The navigator recorded a bearing of forty-five degrees toward the harbor entrance.

   Pilots adjust their bearings as crosswinds push the aircraft off course.

   Similarheading, course, direction

   Note

   The navigator's sense, and the one that comes with a number: sailors take a bearing on a headland and log it in degrees, read clockwise from north. Jonathan Swift, posing as the editor Richard Sympson in 1726, struck out a voyage's "variations and bearings" to keep his book short. From this exact reckoning comes knowing where you are, the figurative sense behind losing one's bearings.

5. 5
   nouncountable or uncountable

   A person's posture, demeanor, and overall manner of carrying oneself.

   The young officer had a dignified bearing that impressed his superiors.

   Despite the bad news, she kept a composed bearing throughout the meeting.

   Similardemeanor, carriage, posture, deportment, manner

   Note

   Posture is read as evidence of who someone is. Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing has 'I know him by his bearing', and the construction still does that identifying work. Steven Pifer, writing in 2019, says the unmarked troops in Crimea were clearly professional soldiers by their bearing. It usually comes with an adjective, such as confident or self-assured, or follows by.

6. 6
   adjective

   Carrying weight or structural load, as a beam, column, or similar supporting element does.

   Contractors warned that the bearing column could not be relocated without new supports.

   Engineers calculated how much force each bearing member would carry.

   Similarsupporting, structural

   Note

   The builder's adjective always comes before its noun: a bearing wall, a bearing column. Keep it apart from the architect's noun, which measures the contact where a member rests (four inches of bearing). Here the word sorts the member itself into the class that carries load, so it takes no degrees. A wall is a bearing wall or it is not.

7. 7
   adjectivein compounds

   Producing, yielding, or carrying the specified thing, as named in combination with the word.

   Geologists mapped the ore-bearing rock layers beneath the valley floor.

   The most heavily bearing vines in the vineyard were harvested first.

   Similaryielding

   Note

   Mostly the second half of a compound: a gift-bearing visitor, ore-bearing rock. The noun in front names what is carried or yielded, and the pair is hyphenated before the noun it describes. The yielding sense is old, since Old English berende already meant 'fruitful'. It is also an absolute adjective: rock is ore-bearing or it is not, never more ore-bearing.

8. 8
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of bear.

   The beams are bearing the full load of the roof above.

   Investors are bearing significant risk in this volatile market.

   Note

   One spelling does two grammatical jobs: it is the participle of the progressive (the beams are bearing the load) and the gerund that works as a noun (bearing arms openly). The form goes back to Old English berende, 'bearing; fruitful'. It inherits every meaning of bear: carrying, wearing, displaying a mark, carrying a child, and even the market sense of pushing prices down.

9. 9
   nouncountable or uncountable

   The portion of a structural member that rests directly upon its support.

   Inspectors measured the bearing of each rafter where it met the top plate.

   Insufficient bearing at the beam ends caused the floor to sag noticeably.

   Note

   A builder's measurement, usually uncountable and given as a length: a lintel may have four inches of bearing upon the wall. It names the end of the member that sits on the support, and the seat beneath it is the other half of the same contact. Builders ask how much bearing a beam has, not how many.

10. 10
    nouncountable

    The part of a support that receives and holds whatever rests upon it.

    Workers leveled the stone bearing before lowering the lintel into place.

    The wall's bearing had crumbled, leaving the beam without solid contact.

    Similarseat, support

    Note

    Seen from the other side of the joint, the word names the seat: the top of a wall, pier or column, rather than the beam end resting on it. Builders use one word for both surfaces, so the surrounding phrase has to show which is meant, as in the bearing of the wall versus the bearing of the beam.

11. 11
    nouncountable

    Any single emblem or charge displayed on a coat of arms or shield.

    The herald described every bearing on the duke's escutcheon in fine detail.

    Three silver stars served as the chief bearings of the noble house.

    Similarcharge, emblem, device

    Note

    Heraldry's word for a charge on the shield is most familiar in the plural phrase armorial bearings, which can stand for a family's whole display of arms. Thackeray's Notes on a Journey (1846) describes the French in Malta effacing armorial bearings and tearing down the gentry's coats of arms. A single lion or star is a bearing, and the shield that carries it is the escutcheon.

12. 12
    nounnonstandardcountable

    The distance a beam or structure spans without any intermediate support.

    The architect calculated the maximum bearing the steel beam could manage safely.

    A longer bearing requires a deeper joist to resist sagging.

    Similarspan

    Note

    A usage to avoid. Here bearing means the stretch between supports, as in a beam with twenty feet of bearing, which is the opposite of the length that actually rests on them. Careful writers treat it as an error, and the clash is the obvious reason. Span or clear span says the same thing without the ambiguity.

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