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gantry

American  
[gan-tree] / ˈgæn tri /

noun

plural

gantries

  1. a framework spanning a railroad track or tracks for displaying signals.

  2. any of various spanning frameworks, as a bridgelike portion of certain cranes.

  3. Rocketry. a frame consisting of scaffolds on various levels used to erect vertically launched rockets and spacecraft.

  4. a framelike stand for supporting a barrel or cask.

gantry British  
/ ˈɡæntrɪ /

noun

  1. a bridgelike framework used to support a travelling crane, signals over a railway track, etc

  2. Also called: gantry scaffold.  the framework tower used to attend to a large rocket on its launching pad

  3. a supporting framework for a barrel or cask

    1. the area behind a bar where bottles, esp spirit bottles mounted in optics, are kept for use or display

    2. the range or quality of the spirits on view

      this pub's got a good gantry
"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Etymology

Origin of gantry

1325–75; Middle English gauntre < dialectal Old French gantier wooden stand, frame, variant of chantier < Medieval Latin cantārius < Latin canthērius < Greek kanthḗlios packass

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

Among the items destined for the scrap heap is the gantry, which once sheltered Soyuz rockets from the tropical weather.

From Barron's • Feb. 18, 2026

Long Beach Fire Chief Dennis Buchanan said fire units responded at 9:06 a.m. and found that several containers were also leaning against a gantry crane.

From Los Angeles Times • Sep. 10, 2025

"Apologies to the listeners. You can understand the emotion. Back to you in the gantry."

From BBC • May 24, 2025

For four days, Hallam and more than three dozen other activists climbed a gantry and thereby blocked traffic in London’s critically important M25 motorway.

From Salon • Oct. 24, 2024

But if I reversed the process, and closed my left eye, all I could see was machinery—a huge pile of it, rocket and gantry and cables and pipes all jumbled together in confusion.

From "Flying to the Moon: An Astronaut's Story" by Michael Collins

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023

Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.