Hello Everyone, welcome back to The Word This Week (TWTW). Our word from last week was Intercostal. This word is used by the medical field as well as by the ship construction industry. For the medical field, intercostal muscles are muscles between each rib bone. They are used to expand and contract the rib cage.
Each muscle starts and stops at adjacent rib bones and therefore is not continuous beyond the next rib bone. For ship construction it is similar, an intercostal girder is a girder that butts into each frame, and is started back on the other side of the frame. So it is not continuous through each frame, but rather ends at each frame and a new section of the girder starts back on the other side of each frame. Intercostal members can be longitudinal or transverse, but they never have the “right of way” through any perpendicular structure. Intercostal means it is made in separate parts; between frames, beams etc.., it is the opposite of continuous. Typically transverse floors and frames on a ship would be continuous across the full beam of the vessel, and girders would be intercostal or non-continuous. But this depends on vessel type and design.
Well, if you were not conversant on the meaning of intercostal, now we can chalk up one more word to our mutual vocabularies.
For the word for this coming week, I am going to stay with the maritime theme. This word has often been 
misunderstood or confused with other words of measurement for ships and vessels. The word is “Lightweight” and I am not referring to any particular persons you may know or to any University of Texas Longhorns. It is a descriptive term of measurement relating to ships and vessels. It is another important term for Naval Architects, and it is important for shipyards with dry-docks, particularly floating dry-docks. Do you know why? Drop me a note on this post, on LinkedIn or on Twitter if you think you know its full meaning.
Be safe in all that you do,
Leonard Hale PMP
