#chamfrain

[mhalachai]

new feature: word of the week

I made some new year’s resolutions around posting more frequently, and one of the things I’m going to try is posting a word of the week, ie a word in use (in Canadian English, to be precise) that I've newly encountered. 

I write for a living, and I keep coming upon new words. It’s great. 

So, to start off this month with:

Chamfer

Verb; definition: to cut away (in the carpentry sense) a 90-degree edge to make an angle between two adjoining surfaces.

this is easier for my topographically-challenged brain to describe visually:

Origin: mid 16th-century, from the French chamfrain, from chant ‘edge’ + fraint ‘broken’ (from Old French fraindre ‘break’, from Latin frangere).

I came cross this word in a metal restoration video yesterday and had to backtrack the captions to double-check the word. Here’s to starting the new year with learning new things!

The video in question, of a book press restoration, from My Mechanics on youtube. The chamfering occurs very briefly at 14:44.

Back next week with a new word!