Also 9 template. [Of uncertain origin.
L. templum ‘temple’ had also the sense ‘rafter’: templet in sense 1 here (but hardly in sense 2) might possibly be a dim. from this. F. templet is given by Littré only as a synonym and presumably a derivative of temple fem., a weaver’s stretcher, TEMPLE sb.3 The spelling template is evidently pseudo-etymological, after plate.]
1. Building. A horizontal piece of timber in a wall, or spanning a window or doorway, to take and distribute the pressure of a girder, or of joists or rafters; a plate.
1677. Moxon, Mech. Exerc. (ed. 2), 26. When you lay any timber on brickwork, as lintels over windows, or templets under girders, lay them in loom.
1802. Trans. Soc. Arts, XX. 216. The templets or wall-plates on which the Girder rests.
1819. P. Nicholson, Archit. Dict., Templet.
1855. Act 18 & 19 Vict., c. 122 § 15. Every bressummer bearing upon any party wall must be borne by a templet, or corbel of stone or iron, tailed through at least half the thickness of such wall, and of the full breadth of the bressummer.
1879. Cassell’s Techn. Educ., III. 195. The purpose of templates is similar to that of wall-plates.
1901. J. Black’s Carp. & Build., Scaffolding, 53. The templets must … be bedded in good strong portland cement mortar before being wedged up tightly.
b. Shipbuilding. One of the wedges for a block under the keel.
1877. in Knight, Dict. Mech.
2. An instrument used as a gauge or guide in bringing any piece of work to the desired shape; usually a flat piece of wood or metal having one edge shaped to correspond to the outline of the finished work; also used as a tool in molding, and as a guide in forming molds for castings or pottery, in an automatic lathe, etc.
1819. P. Nicholson, Archit. Dict., Templet, a mould used in masonry and brickwork for the purpose of cutting or setting the work. Ibid. (1823), Pract. Build., 359. It will be necessary to have one templet made convex, to try the faces of bricks to.
1825. J. Nicholson, Operat. Mechanic, 586. Form a templet or cradle to the surface intended.
1844. Civil Egin. & Arch. Jrnl., VII. 187/1. The propeller was of cast iron, and was moulded in loam without a model, by means of iron templates cut to the required curve.
1863. Smiles, Indust. Biog., 271. His [R. Roberts’s] system of templets and gauges, by means of which every part of an engine or tender corresponded with that of every other engine or tender of the same class.
1879. Cassell’s Techn. Educ., I. 3/2.
b. A flat plate or strip perforated with holes used as a guide in marking out holes for riveting or drilling. Also attrib.
Also, a wooden frame corresponding to the base of any piece of machinery that requires to be fixed by bolts, having holes by means of which the permanent holding-down bolts can be previously fixed in concrete in the exact position to pass through the bolt-holes in the base in question.
1874. Thearle, Naval Archit., 98. Templates are used for taking account of the rivet holes in the inside strakes corresponding to those in the frames, when the plates are too heavy to be held in place, and there marked.
1877. Knight, Dict. Mech., 2529/2. Perforated templets are used by boiler-makers and others to lay out the holes for punching.
1895. A. J. Evans, in Jrnl. Hellenic Stud., XIV. 320. The symbol might have been a simple kind of stencilling plate known as a ‘template,’ such as is still in use among decorators. Ibid., 323. The template symbol.
