The roof of the old house was covered with ____ made from dried reeds.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
The old cottage had a beautiful ____ roof made from dried straw, which gave it a very traditional and cozy look today.
Word Origin & History
Variant of thack, from Middle English thache, thach, from Old English þæc (“roof-covering”), from Proto-West Germanic *þak, from Proto-Germanic *þaką (“covering”), from (o-grade of) Proto-Indo-European *(s)teg- (“cover”).
Cognate with Icelandic þak, Dutch dak, German Dach, Norwegian tak, Swedish tak, Danish tag; and with Latin toga, Albanian thak (“awn, beard, pin, peg, tassel, fringe”), Lithuanian stogas (“roof”), Welsh to (“roof”). Related to Ancient Greek τέγος (tégos, “roof”) and στέγη (stégē, “roof”). See also English deech, deck.
Literary Quotations & Historical Citations
"Just over halfway up, we reached the Human settlement with its houses of stone and wood and thatch. This was a prewar place."
— 1989, Octavia E. Butler, “Part III, Chapter 7”, in Imago, page 210:
"Mark Ladd, the venue’s assistant director of operations, notes that the fake greenery looks authentic: the height and colour of the blades are varied, with a few brown ones thrown in to emulate dead thatch."
— 2015 May 30, Rob Kuznia, “California turns to fake grass in response to drought”, in The Guardian:
"Brown was a compact dark-skinned man in his forties, with strong features and a dense thatch of brown hair that sprang from his crown at an angle, though it had been brushed to either side of an indeterminate part."
— 2008, Harriet A. Washington, “Profitable Wonders”, in Medical Apartheid, Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, page 52:
"An outgoing, story-telling Irishman from Butte, Montana, with his thatch of red hair and sandpapered face, Matt was the quintessential imp."
— 2008, Wallace Madding, The Country Club Killings: A Montana Story, page 21: