clapboard

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On these logs, lapping one over the other, and the lower tier resting against the butting poles, were laid slabs of clapboard--a species of plank split from some straight-grained tree--about four feet long, and from three to four wide.

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Definitions (10)

Toggle American Heritage definitions American Heritage Dictionary (2)

  1. noun A long narrow board with one edge thicker than the other, overlapped horizontally to cover the outer walls of frame structures. Also called weatherboard.
  2. transitive verb To cover with clapboards.

Toggle Century definitions Century Dictionary (4)

Toggle GNU Webster definitions GNU Webster's 1913 (2)

Toggle WordNet definitions WordNet (2)

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Examples (50)

  • “Sure. Down on Lincoln Lake.” Weather lived in a rambling, white-clapboard house with a steep, snow-covered roof. —  Winter Prey
  • The yellow clapboard-sided house was a charmer, with three gabled dormers, an overgrown flower garden, and a whirligig of a lumberjack sawing wood attached to the post-and-rail fence. —  4th ofJuly - Patterson
  • The clapboard was painted bright white and the lawn was neatly tended. —  Karin Slaughter - Blindsighted
  • Cottages—most of them old-fashioned clapboard, but also a few of those oddly angled structures with windows in strange places that people seem compelled to build near the water—stood on the narrow strip of land between the road and the drop-off to the bay. —  Muller, Marcia - [11] Trophies and Dead Things.htm
  • There were perhaps fifty clapboard-roofed, unhewn-log houses and buildings by now, with only one more imposing frame dwelling. —  Three Roads to Alamo
 

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This word has been looked up 194 times.

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Etymologies (3)

Toggle American Heritage etymologies American Heritage Dictionary (1)

  1. Partial translation of Dutch klaphout : klappen, to split, crack + Middle Dutch holt, board.

Toggle Century etymologies Century Dictionary (2)

  1. Early modern English also clawboard, cloboard; apparently from clap + board, but perhaps orig. from claw (with reference to clenching), or clove (past participle of cleave, split), + board.
  2. from clapboard, n.
 

Pronunciations
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/ˈklæpˈbərd; cɑllɑq. klæbərd/
by American Heritage

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