buckling

plural bucklings

1. The act of fastening a buckle.
2. geographyA folding into hills and valleys.
3. The action of giving in (slightly) to pressure or stress by developing a bulge, bending or kinking (with the eventual risk of collapsing).

   Engineers decided not to use hydraulics, to ensure there was no twisting or buckling to the 80-tonne girder structure.

   2021 July 14, “Network News: Network Rail engineers raise Machynlleth bridge”, in RAIL, number 935, page 27

   1 more example

   The rail might still buckle when it's extremely cold. A signals box, that's a metal box on the side of the right of way, might still overheat. So we need to make sure that our operational capacity to respond to those potential disruptions and address them as quickly as possible is a really robust part of our operations. Rail buckling is kind of part of the business in some capacity. That's what we hear from other transit agencies working in the South for example, with extreme heat.

   2026 May 6, “How the MBTA Handles Climate Change” (35:36 from the start), in Spilling the T (podcast), spoken by Caroline Bean, MBTA

comparative more buckling · superlative most buckling

1. Wavy; curly, as hair.

1. gerundparticiplepresentpresent participle and gerund of buckle

plural bucklings

1. A young male domestic goat of between one and two years.

   1994, Carla Emery, The Encyclopedia of Country Living, Ninth Edition, Sasquatch Books, →ISBN, page 715, If you do have extra milk, then by all means raise your extra bucklings and cull doelings for meat.

   2 more examples

   1994, Mary C. Smith and David M. Sherman, Goat Medicine, Blackwell Publishing, →ISBN, page 429, The newborn doe kids destined to become habitual aborters (and the buckling that carries the trait) are above average in weight and have a very fine haircoat.

   1997, Ruth Schubarth, “Born Backwards”, in Linda M. Hasselstrom, Gaydell M. Collier, and Nancy Curtis (eds.), Leaning Into the Wind: Women Write from the Heart of the West, Houghton Mifflin Books, →ISBN, page 161, I milk the goats and put wethers (the castrated bucklings) in the freezer with ducks, chickens, rabbits, and lambs.

plural bucklings

1. Smoked herring.