A beam is a long, strong piece of wood, metal, or concrete used to support buildings or bridges. It also means a narrow ray of light, like a laser beam or a beam of sunlight.
“Beam” comes from Old English “bēam,” which originally meant a tree or large piece of wood. Over time it came to mean both structural supports and later the straight lines of light they resembled.
The same word describes both the wood holding up your ceiling and the sunlight shining through it. That double meaning helps you picture a beam of light as something solid and straight, almost like a glowing plank.
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