ballast

While not exactly the Ugly American, Sinatra provided plenty of his own homegrown ballast.

Especially the Southern ones, who by and large run the party, or at least provide its cultural ballast.

“Gold lost its structural ballast when it lost its formal relationship to money,” he concludes.

Straighten up and fly right: the capsule is rolling and jettisoning its remaining ballast masses for parachute deploy.

Spin down, turn to entry attitude and jettison ballast mass in one minute.

Sand and gravel are also used for "fill," for engine sands, railroad ballast and glass.

Old and new measurements, tonnage, time allowances and movable ballast, are all a sealed book to me.

The big sloop, hard aground and full of iron ballast, was not a thing to be moved easily.

Our new craft worked and sailed well, after a little addition of ballast.

I ordered the ballast to be thrown overboard, and determined, as our only chance, to attempt to force her over the reef.