splint
/splɪnt
/noun
1A strip of rigid material used for supporting and immobilizing a broken bone when it has been set: she had to wear splints on her legs...
- If a single digit is infected, a finger splint supporting the interphalangeal joints in extension is usually adequate.
- Medications, hand splints and physical therapy can help in earlier stages of rheumatoid arthritis.
- The splint supported the posterolateral part of the lower leg but also had a slight anterior curve.
2A long, thin strip of wood used to light a fire.By the light of burning splints, the raiders had marched all the men into the fields and tied them up....
- Then he cuts a few short splints from the edge of another scrap of wood.
2.1A rigid or flexible strip, especially of wood, used in basketwork.It was employed to create splints for making baskets, skin an animal, fashion snowshoes, harpoons, spears, bowls, and ladles, and make a birchbark canoe....
- Some of us had a chance to beat on a hickory log to make basket splints, or watch gunsmithing, cabinetry, tinsmithing, pottery, printing, and many other trades.
- The vegetation also provided splints from which the Indians wove baskets, which were considered vital for religious use.
3A bony enlargement on the inside of a horse’s leg, on the splint bone.He's got a nasty old splint on the inside of his knee and it often flares up,’ said the Jackdaws Castle trainer....
- In ventral view, the sphenorbital fissure, which is long and oval, is exposed posteriorly and is separated from the relatively small optic foramen by a narrow bony splint.
- Bellamy Road came out of his seventh-place finish in the Kentucky Derby with a splint injury and has not raced since.
4South African A fragment of diamond."Splints" are sharp-pointed splinters of diamond crystal....
- Chips or splints are often fashioned by the cutter with very little loss of weight.
verb [with object]
Secure (a broken limb) with a splint or splints: his leg was splinted...
- There his leg was splinted and eight Tibetan yak herdsmen carried Conan for 17 hours to base camp.
- It really could have been a lot worse and Johnny and Cipriano did an excellent job in splinting that arm right away.
- The treatment plan recommended at this late stage included splinting the hand in an intrinsic-plus position and observation to allow definitive demarcation of the involved parts of the left hand.
Origin
Middle English (in sense 2 of the noun; also denoting a section of armour): from Middle Dutch, Middle Low German splinte 'metal plate or pin'; related to splinter.