Sample sentences for BALLAST - verbalworkout.com

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Definition

something that helps to stabilize — especially heavy material in the bottom of an empty ship

Less common senses of ballast include: coarse gravel laid to form a bed for streets and railroads

or:

a resistor inserted into a circuit to compensate for changes (such as is used to start and regulate fluorescent bulbs)

Without ballast, the ship will roll too much.

...she looked at the marked passages [of the manuscript] and was surprised to find that all the moral reflections—which she had carefully put in as ballast for much romance—had been stricken out.
Louisa May Alcott -- Little Women
Sea water used as ballast.
So are the motions of a little vessel without ballast tossed about on a stormy sea.
George Eliot -- Adam Bede
Overnight we'd topped up our gas cells with hydrium and pumped water into our ballast and drinking tanks.
Kenneth Oppel -- Airborn

ballast = something that helps to stabilize — especially heavy material in the bottom of an empty ship

There was no ballast within — they were pillows upon pillows.
Dave Eggers -- A Hologram for the King
The cigars are ballast, sweetheart.
J.D. Salinger -- Franny and Zooey
It's made of broken amphorae that were used as ballast on ships that docked in the Tiber.
Mark Helprin -- A Soldier of the Great War
He says he feels as if he 'could make a prosperous voyage now with me aboard as mate, and lots of love for ballast'.
Louisa May Alcott -- Little Women
They'd been little more than ballast since Storm's End, and were eager to get at the foe, confident of victory.
George R.R. Martin -- A Clash of Kings
Then was the launching full of difficulty; there was shifting of ballast above and below till two thirds was submerged.
Unknown -- The Epic of Gilgamesh
Woolf threw himself forward as ballast, thrusting his feet straight back.
Laura Hillenbrand -- Seabiscuit
The ballast had been shifted too.
Daphne du Maurier -- Rebecca
I'm using them as ballast.
Andy Weir -- The Martian
'The Gaffer's delight, and rare good ballast for an empty belly.
J.R.R. Tolkien -- The Two Towers
Thus I saw the seventh ballast[1] change and rechange, and here let the novelty be my excuse, if my pen straggle[2] a little.
Dante Alighieri -- Dante's Inferno
So are the motions of a little vessel without ballast tossed about on a stormy sea.
George Eliot -- Adam Bede
We thought with an age limit— a reasonable one— the older heads could act as ballast while they grow up.
Robert A. Heinlein -- Tunnel In the Sky
Maybe they brought the stones as ballast.
Terry Pratchett -- Nation
There was a stability, a ballast, in Phillotson's pronouncement which restrained his friend's comment.
Thomas Hardy -- Jude the Obscure

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