From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishlintellin‧tel /ˈlɪntl/ noun [countable] TBBa piece of stone or wood across the top of a window or door, forming part of the frame
Examples from the Corpus
lintel• Forget to duck - whack; your head hits a lintel.• A bloody-mouthed mastiff tied by a chain to a lintel of a door snarled and barked.• Doors and lintels were decorated with whitewash.• Occasional low lintels bumped and scraped his head in the blackness.• Each one has its silvery gray live-oak lintel, still supporting the column of lovely pink brick.• Horse brasses had been tacked along the length of the oaken lintel and gleamed in the firelight.• We wedged it in place firmly, but not too tight against the lintel, leaving room for adjustment.• But again, as with the lintels, the union did not allow the bricklayers to use a plumb line.Origin lintel (1300-1400) Old French Latin limitaris “of an edge or boundary”, from limes; → LIMIT1 