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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

... for the different numbers remind one of the slang of the crap shooter. For instance, "Kelly's eye" means one. "Clickety click" is sixty-six. "Top of the house" is ninety. Other games are "crown and anchor", which is a dice game, and "pontoon", which is a card game similar to "twenty-one" or "seven and a half." Most of these are mildly discouraged by the authorities, "house" being the exception. But in any estaminet in a billet town you'll find one or all of them in progress all the time. The winner ...

— A Yankee in the Trenches • R. Derby Holmes

... the hills opposite Lambertville, made good use of their defensive position, and for three days held back the enemy from crossing the river. In fact, it was only on the evening of the third day, June 21, that von Hindenburg's engineers succeeded in completing their pontoon line to the Pennsylvania shore. Again and again the floating bridge was destroyed by a concentrated shell fire from American batteries on the ridge a mile and a ...

— The Conquest of America - A Romance of Disaster and Victory • Cleveland Moffett

... facilities that may be at hand for constructing the means of passage; but the only organized bridge trains which move with the army are those which carry the pontoons. Of these there are various kinds, made of wood, of corrugated iron, and of india rubber stretched over frames. But the wooden pontoon boats are most in use. They can be placed in a river and the flooring laid upon them with great rapidity. Several very fine bridges have been thus constructed—among them may be mentioned the one at the mouth of the Chickahominy, across which General McClellan's army marched in ...

— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... passing with every known thing therein—first thousands of soldiers, then wagons of provisions, cannon, boats for pontoon bridges mounted on wheels ready for unloading, material for building, trucks of hay, portable houses and in one car were hundreds of tiny wheels sticking up which we discovered belonged to wheelbarrows. It is a droll ...

— Lige on the Line of March - An American Girl's Experiences When the Germans Came Through Belgium • Glenna Lindsley Bigelow

... field-guns, ambulances with staring red crosses painted on their canvas tops, then gigantic siege-guns, their grim muzzles pointing skyward, each drawn by thirty straining horses; engineers, sappers and miners with picks and spades, pontoon-wagons, carts piled high with what looked like masses of yellow silk but which proved to be balloons, bicyclists with carbines slung upon their backs hunter-fashion, aeroplane outfits, bearded and spectacled doctors of the medical corps, armoured motor-cars with curved steel rails above them ...

— Fighting in Flanders • E. Alexander Powell

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