What is "truss"

Truss \Truss\, n. [OE. trusse, F. trousse, OF. also tourse; perhaps fr. L. tryrsus stalk, stem. Cf. Thyrsus, Torso, Trousers, Trousseau.]

1. A bundle; a package; as, a truss of grass.
   --Fabyan.

   Bearing a truss of trifles at his back.
   --Spenser.

   Note: A truss of hay in England is 56 lbs. of old and 60 lbs. of new hay; a truss of straw is 36 lbs.

2. A padded jacket or dress worn under armor, to protect the body from the effects of friction; also, a part of a woman's dress; a stomacher. [Obs.]
   --Nares.

   Puts off his palmer's weed unto his truss, which bore The stains of ancient arms.
   --Drayton.

3. (Surg.) A bandage or apparatus used in cases of hernia, to keep up the reduced parts and hinder further protrusion, and for other purposes.

4. (Bot.) A tuft of flowers formed at the top of the main stalk, or stem, of certain plants.

5. (Naut.) The rope or iron used to keep the center of a yard to the mast.

6. (Arch. & Engin.) An assemblage of members of wood or metal, supported at two points, and arranged to transmit pressure vertically to those points, with the least possible strain across the length of any member. Architectural trusses when left visible, as in open timber roofs, often contain members not needed for construction, or are built with greater massiveness than is requisite, or are composed in unscientific ways in accordance with the exigencies of style.

   Truss rod, a rod which forms the tension member of a trussed beam, or a tie rod in a truss.

Truss \Truss\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Trussed; p. pr. & vb. n. Trussing.] [F. trousser. See Truss, n.]

1. To bind or pack close; to tie up tightly; to make into a truss.
   --Shak.

   It [his hood] was trussed up in his wallet.
   --Chaucer.

2. To take fast hold of; to seize and hold firmly; to pounce upon. [Obs.]

   Who trussing me as eagle doth his prey.
   --Spenser.

3. To strengthen or stiffen, as a beam or girder, by means of a brace or braces.

4. To skewer; to make fast, as the wings of a fowl to the body in cooking it.

5. To execute by hanging; to hang; -- usually with up. [Slang.]
   --Sir W. Scott.

   To truss a person or To truss one's self, to adjust and fasten the clothing of; especially, to draw tight and tie the laces of garments. [Obs.] ``Enter Honeysuckle, in his nightcap, trussing himself.''
   --J. Webster (1607).

   To truss up, to strain; to make close or tight.

   Trussed beam, a beam which is stiffened by a system of braces constituting a truss of which the beam is a chord.

c.1200, "collection of things bound together," from Old French trousse, torse "parcel, package, bundle," of uncertain origin, perhaps from Vulgar Latin *torciare "to twist," from Late Latin torquere (see torque (n.)). Meaning "surgical appliance to support a rupture, etc." first attested 1540s. Sense of "framework for supporting a roof or bridge" is first recorded 1650s.

c.1200, "to load, load up," from Anglo-French trusser, Old French trusser, torser "to load, fill, pack, fasten" (11c.), from Old French trousse, torse (see truss (n.)). Related: Trussed; trussing.

n. A bandage and belt used to hold a hernia in place. vb. 1 (context transitive English) To tie up a bird before cooking it. 2 (context transitive English) To secure or bind with ropes. 3 (context transitive English) To support. 4 To take fast hold of; to seize and hold firmly; to pounce upon. 5 To strengthen or stiffen, as a beam or girder, by means of a brace or braces. 6 (context slang archaic English) To execute by hanging; to hang; usually with ''up''.

1. n. (medicine) a bandage consisting of a pad and belt; worn to hold a hernia in place by pressure

2. a framework of beams forming a rigid structure (as a roof truss)

3. (architecture) a triangular bracket of brick or stone (usually of slight extent) [syn: corbel]

4. v. tie the wings and legs of a bird before cooking it

5. secure with or as if with ropes; "tie down the prisoners"; "tie up the old newspapes and bring them to the recycling shed" [syn: tie down, tie up, bind]

6. support structurally; "truss the roofs"; "trussed bridges"

In engineering, a truss is a structure that "consists of two-force members only, where the members are organized so that the assemblage as a whole behaves as a single object". A "two-force member" is a structural component where force is applied to only two points. Although this rigorous definition allows the members to have any shape connected in any stable configuration, trusses typically comprise five or more triangular units constructed with straight members whose ends are connected at joints referred to as nodes. In this typical context, external forces and reactions to those forces are considered to act only at the nodes and result in forces in the members that are either tensile or compressive. For straight members, moments ( torques) are explicitly excluded because, and only because, all the joints in a truss are treated as revolutes, as is necessary for the links to be two-force members.

A planar truss is one where all members and nodes lie within a two dimensional plane, while a space truss has members and nodes that extend into three dimensions. The top beams in a truss are called top chords and are typically in compression, the bottom beams are called bottom chords, and are typically in tension. The interior beams are called webs, and the areas inside the webs are called panels.

In medicine, a truss is a kind of surgical appliance, particularly one used for hernia patients. A truss provides support for the herniated area, using a pad and belt arrangement to hold it in the correct position.

Of historical interest, a variety of trusses are listed in the Snowden & Brother's catalog of the American Civil War era.

Early versions of the hernia truss were daunting contraptions made from leather and steel with metal springs. The 19th century Eggleston's Truss from Chicago was described as follows:

"Eggleston's Truss has a pad different from all others. It is cup-shaped, with a self-adjusting ball in the centre, and adapts itself to all positions of the body, while the ball in the cup presses back the intestines just as a person does with the finger. With light pressure the hernia is held securely day and night, and a radical cure is certain. It is easy, durable and cheap."

Later developments resulted in the Cluthe truss, described in Cluthe's Advice to the Ruptured, first published in 1912. This book also describes dozens of hernia cases which appeared to be cured by this relatively primitive truss. Such testimonials are no longer considered to be scientific evidence.

Currently most doctors and surgeons do not prescribe trusses. Even some of today's trusses use metal springs to apply pressure to the hernia, via a pad which can be quite hard, and usually bulges into the hernia. This inward bulging prevents the edges of the hernia from coming together and could, in theory, enlarge the hernia. Many trusses also do not fit well. It is difficult to design a truss which keeps the pad permanently in contact with the hernia. Unless a truss can achieve this purpose, the hernia may continue to enlarge.

Due to surgical risks, mainly chronic pain risk, external devices such as a truss to maintain reduction of the hernia without repairing the underlying defect are often used.

A truss is an architectural structure.

Truss may also refer to:

• Truss (medicine), a type of surgical appliance
• Truss (Unix), a Unix operating system program to trace system calls with their arguments and signals
• Truss rod, a guitar part used to adjust the profile of its neck
• Truss (botany), a terminal cluster of flowers or fruit arising from one stalk
• Truss (surname), a list of people with the surname

is a system tool available on some Unix-like operating systems. When invoked with an additional executable command-line argument, makes it possible to print out the system calls made by and the signals received by this executable command-line argument. As of version IEEE Std 1003.1-2008, is not part of the Single UNIX Specification ( POSIX).

The command was originally developed by Roger Faulkner and Ron Gomes as part of the development of Procfs for System V Release 4. While several names were considered, “” was chosen for being non-ambiguous and easily pronounceable, with multiple meanings, including as an abbreviation for TRace Unix Syscalls and Signals or in the sense of “If your program doesn’t work, put it in a truss.”

Truss is a surname which may refer to:

• Adrian Truss, Canadian voice actor
• Elizabeth Truss (born 1975), British politician
• Lynne Truss (born 1955), British writer and journalist
• Warren Truss (born 1948), Australian politician

A truss is a tight bundle of hay or straw. It would usually be cuboid, for storage or shipping, and would either be harvested into such bundles or cut from a large rick.