shingle

shingle¹

—shingler, n.

/shing"geuhl/, n., v., shingled, shingling.

n.

1. a thin piece of wood, slate, metal, asbestos, or the like, usually oblong, laid in overlapping rows to cover the roofs and walls of buildings.

2. a woman's close-cropped haircut.

3. Informal. a small signboard, esp. as hung before a doctor's or lawyer's office.

4. have or be a shingle short, Australian Slang. to be mentally disturbed, mad, or eccentric.

5. hang out one's shingle, Informal. to establish a professional practice, esp. in law or medicine; open an office.

v.t.

6. to cover with shingles, as a roof.

7. to cut (hair) close to the head.

[1150-1200; ME scincle, sc(h)ingle < ML scindula lath, shingle (ME -g- appar. by assoc. with another unidentified word), L scandula (ML -i- perh. by assoc. with Gk schíza lath, splinter, or related words)]

shingle²

/shing"geuhl/, n.

1. small, waterworn stones or pebbles such as lie in loose sheets or beds on a beach.

2. a beach, riverbank, or other area covered with such small pebbles or stones.

[1530-40; appar. var. of earlier chingle; cf. Norw singel small stones]

shingle³

/shing"geuhl/, v.t., shingled, shingling. Metalworking.

to hammer or squeeze (puddled iron) into a bloom or billet, eliminating as much slag as possible; knobble.

[1665-75; < F cingler to whip, beat < G zängeln, deriv. of Zange TONGS]

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Thin piece of building material made of wood, asphaltic material, slate, metal, or concrete, laid in overlapping rows to shed water.

Shingles are widely used as roof covering on residential buildings and sometimes also for siding (see Shingle style). Wood shingles in the U.S. are usually made of cypress, redwood, or Western red cedar.

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▪ building material

      thin piece of building material, usually with a butt end thicker than the other. Shingles are widely used as roof covering on residential buildings and sometimes for siding. They are of stock sizes and various materials—including wood, asphalt, and slate. They are attached in overlapping courses, or rows.

      As roofing, the degree to which the shingle's surface is exposed is controlled by the pitch of the roof. As siding, the degree of overlap is mainly an aesthetic concern. Wooden shingles are cut in various ways, such as hand splitting, which is the ancient method, quarter-sawing, and plain-sawing. They are usually cut from green wood and kiln-dried. If quartersawn and with a thick butt, they resist warping. Wood shingles in the United States are usually of cypress, redwood, or Western red cedar. They may be entirely of heartwood, in which case they are relatively decay resistant, or of mixed heartwood and sapwood. The surface may be striated, left smooth by sawing, or feature the slight roughness of hand splitting. Wood shingles must be treated with some kind of weatherproofing stain or paint to keep them from bleaching to a grayish colour.

      “Shingle style” is a mode of wood shingle-covered American domestic architecture of the 1870s and '80s. The finest examples are Henry Hobson Richardson's Sherman House (1874–75) in Newport, R.I., and the Stoughton House (1882–83) in Cambridge, Mass.

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