camber

• cambre (chiefly obsolete)

From Old French cambre (“bent”), from Latin camurum, from camur (“arched”).

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈkæm.bə/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈkæm.bɚ/

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camber (uncountable)

1. A slight convexity, arching or curvature of a surface of a road, beam, roof, ship's deck etc., so that liquids will flow off the sides.
   • 2004, Alan Hollinghurst, chapter 1, in The Line of Beauty, New York: Bloomsbury, OCLC 1036692193:

     From end to end, just behind the houses, ran the broad gravel walk, with its emphatic camber and its metal-edged gutters where a child's ball would come to rest and the first few plane leaves, dusty but still green, were already falling, since the summer had been so hot and rainless all through.

2. The slope of a curved road created to minimize the effect of centrifugal force.

   Synonym: crossfall

   • 1952, Norman Lewis, Golden Earth:

     Again we were stricken of our palsy, slowed down, re-accelerated, and there, at last, were the few huts of a hamlet, with the lorry, lying at an angle in the road's camber, outside a tea-shop.

   • 2000, Bob Foster, Birdum or Bust!, Henley Beach, SA: Seaview Press, page 173:

     Even a small camber one way caused the whole outfit to list alarmingly.

3. (architecture) An upward concavity in the underside of a beam, girder, or lintel; also, a slight upward concavity in a straight arch.
4. (automotive) The alignment on the roll axis of the wheels of a road vehicle, where positive camber signifies that the wheels are closer together at the bottom than the top.
5. (aviation) The curvature of an airfoil.
6. (nautical) A small enclosed dock in which timber for masts (etc.) is kept to weather.

camber (third-person singular simple present cambers, present participle cambering, simple past and past participle cambered)

1. To curve upwards in the middle.
2. To adjust the camber of the wheels of a vehicle.

   Because he cambered the tires too much, he had less control on the turns.

• Cambre, cambre, cambré, cembra