English

All Saints Church in Lund, Sweden, covered in scaffolding (sense 1) in June 2009

A scaffold (sense 1) installed around the dome of the United States Capitol in July 2016 for restoration work

The execution of Stanislaus Lacroix by hanging in Hull, Quebec, Canada, on 21 March 1902. Lacroix (wearing a hood), a priest, and the officials carrying out the execution are standing on a scaffold (sense 2).

Noun

scaffold ‎(plural scaffolds)

1. A structure made of scaffolding for workers to stand on while working on a building.
   • 1999, William P[erkins] Spence, “Ladders, Scaffolding & Runways”, in Carpentry & Building Construction: A Do-it-yourself Guide, New York, N.Y.: Sterling Publishing Company, Inc., ISBN 978-0-8069-9845-9, page 26:

     1. A scaffold must be able to hold four times the load it is expected to carry. / 2. The footing for a scaffold must be level and solid and must not have motion when weight is applied. The scaffold must be level and plumb.

   • 2015, Phil Hughes; Ed Ferrett, “Workplace Hazards and Risk Control”, in International Health and Safety at Work: For the NEBOSH International General Certificate in Occupational Health and Safety, 3rd edition, Abingdon, Oxon.; New York, N.Y.: Routledge, ISBN 978-1-138-83130-8, page 205:

     It is quicker and easier to use a ladder as a means of access, but it is not always the safest. Jobs, such as painting, gutter repair, demolition work or window replacement, are often easier done using a scaffold. If the work can be completed comfortably using ladders, a scaffold need not be considered. Scaffolds must be capable of supporting building workers, equipment, materials, tools and any accumulated waste.

2. An elevated platform on which a criminal is executed.
3. (metalworking) An accumulation of adherent, partly fused material forming a shelf or dome-shaped obstruction above the tuyeres in a blast furnace.
4. (sciences) A structure that provides support for some other material.
   • 2011 September 29, Reiko Iwazawa; Kentaro Nakamura, Scaffold for Vascular Endothelial Cell Migration, US Patent US 20130084638 A1:

     [T]he inventors of the present invention have found that the above-described recombinant gelatin contained in the scaffold for vascular endothelial cell migration according to the present invention markedly promotes migration of vascular endothelial cells. Therefore, use of the scaffold for vascular endothelial cell migration according to the present invention makes it possible to ensure that vascular endothelial cells migrate to a predetermined site to newly form blood vessels.

   • 2016, Binhai Zhu, “Genomic Scaffold Filling: A Progress Report”, in Daming Zhu and Sergey Bereg, editors, Frontiers in Algorithmics: 10th International Workshop, FAW 2016, Qingdao, China, June 30 – July 2, 2016, Proceedings (Lecture Notes in Computer Science; 9711), [Cham, Switzerland]: Springer International Publishing, DOI:10.1007/978-3-319-39817-4, ISBN 978-3-319-39816-7, page 8:

     […] Munoz et al. first proposed the following scaffold filling problem (on multichromosomal genomes with no gene repetition) as follows […]. Given a complete (permutation) genome R and an incomplete scaffold S, fill the missing genes in R – S into S to have S′ such that the genomic distance […] between R and S′ is minimized. It was shown that this problem can be solved in polynomial time.

Derived terms

Translations

Verb

scaffold ‎(third-person singular simple present scaffolds, present participle scaffolding, simple past and past participle scaffolded)

1. (transitive) To set up a scaffolding; to surround a building with scaffolding.

Translations