Shingle Meaning
/ˈʃɪŋ.ɡəl/Definition, CEFR level C2, pronunciation, examples, and quiz.
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Definition
nounA small, thin piece of building material, often with one end thicker than the other, for laying in overlapping rows as a covering for the roof or sides of a building.
nounA rectangular piece of steel obtained by means of a shingling process involving hammering of puddled steel.
Sentence Examples
The town had three lumber mills, four shingle mills, and a gristmill.
The house has two floors and a wood shingle roof.
CEFR Practice Quiz
The roofer nailed a new ____ onto the roof of the old house.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
The storm blew a single ____ off the roof, leaving a small hole that needed immediate repair.
Word Origin & History
From Middle English shyngel, alteration of Old English sċindel, from Proto-West Germanic *skindulā, borrowed from Late Latin scindula, from Latin scandula, from Proto-Indo-European *sked- (“to split, scatter”), from *sek- (“to cut”). Doublet of shindle.
Literary Quotations & Historical Citations
"I reached St. Asaph, a Bishop's See, where there is a very poor Cathedral Church, covered with Shingles or Tiles"
— 1760, John Ray, Select Remains of the Learned John Ray, M.A. and F.R.S., page 123:
"He [...] hung a shingle as a barber."
— 2016, Colson Whitehead, The Underground Railroad, Fleet (2017), page 311:
"In the second phase, we produce a list of all the shingles and the documents they appear in, sorted by shingle value."
— 1997 September 1, Andrei Z. Broder, Steven C. Glassman, Mark S. Manasse, Geoffrey Zweig, “Syntactic clustering of the Web”, in Computer Networks and ISDN Systems (Papers from the Sixth International World Wide Web Conference), volume 29, number 8, →DOI, →ISSN, pages 1157–1166:
"And naked shingles of the world."
— 1867, Matthew Arnold, Dover Beach:
"You need to excavate and remove the topsoil, line the subsoil with a geotextile, then lay and compact hardcore. Follow this with a layer of compacted "hoggin" – compacted clay, gravel and sand. This is then sprayed with hot bitumen, and has a layer of pea shingle rolled into it."
— 2014 August 24, Jeff Howell, “Home improvements: gravel paths and cutting heating bills [print version: Cold comfort in technology, 23 August 2014, p. P5]”, in The Daily Telegraph (Property):
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CEFR Practice Quiz
The roofer nailed a new ____ onto the roof of the old house.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
The storm blew a single ____ off the roof, leaving a small hole that needed immediate repair.