roof

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. The exterior surface and its supporting structures on the top of a building.
2. n. The upper exterior surface of a dwelling as a symbol of the home itself: three generations living under one roof.
3. n. The top covering of something: the roof of a car.
4. n. The upper surface of an anatomical structure, especially one having a vaulted inner structure: the roof of the mouth.
5. n. The highest point or limit; the summit or ceiling: A roof on prices is needed to keep our customers happy.
6. v. To furnish or cover with or as if with a roof.
7. idiom. go through the roof Slang To grow, intensify, or rise to an enormous, often unexpected degree: Operating costs went through the roof last year.
8. idiom. go through the roof Slang To become extremely angry: When I told her about breaking the window, she went through the roof.
9. idiom. raise the roof Slang To be extremely noisy and boisterous: They raised the roof at the party.
10. idiom. raise the roof Slang To complain loudly and bitterly: Angry tenants finally raised the roof about their noisy neighbors.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. The external upper covering of a house or other building. Roofs are distinguished by the materials of which they are mainly formed, as thatch, stone, wood, slate, tile, iron, etc., and by their form and mode of construction, in great variety, as shed, curb, hip, gable, pavilion, ogee, and flat roofs. The span of a roof is the width between the supports; the rise is the height of the ridge of the highest part above the level of the supports; the pitch is the slope or angle at which it is inclined. In carpentry, roof signifies the timber framework by which the roofing or covering materials of the building are supported. This consists in general of the principal rafters, the purlins, and the common rafters. The principal rafters, or principals, as they are commonly termed, are placed so as to span the building at intervals usually of 10 or 12 feet; the purlins lie horizontally upon these, and sustain the common rafters, which carry the covering of the roof. The accompanying figure shows one of the two varieties of principals which are in common use (the king-post principal), with the purlins and common rafters in position. (For a diagram of the second, the queen-post principal, see queen-post.) Each of these modes of framing constitutes a truss. Sometimes, when the width of the building is not great, common rafters are used alone to support the roof. They are in that case joined together in pairs, nailed where they meet at the top, and connected by means of a tie at the bottom. They are then termed couples, a pair forming a couple-close. See also cuts under hammer-beam, hip-roof, jerkin-head, M-roof, pendent, and pendentive.
2. n. Anything which in form or position corresponds to or resembles the covering of a house, as the arch or top of a furnace or oven, the top of a carriage or coach or car, an arch or the interior of a vault, the ceiling of a room, etc.; hence, a canopy or the like.
3. n. A house.
4. n. The upper part of the mouth; the hard palate.
5. n. Figuratively, the loftiest part.
6. n. In geology, the overlying stratum.
7. n. In mining, the top of any subterranean excavation: little used except in coal-mining.
8. n. A roof but slightly inclined for the discharge of water. Roofs of this form are common in city buildings, especially in the United States, and are usually covered with sheet-metal.
9. To cover with a roof, in any sense of that word.
10. To inclose in a house; shelter.
11. To arch or form like a roof.
12. An obsolete preterit of rive.

Wiktionary

1. n. The cover at top of a building.
2. n. The upper part of a cavity.
3. v. To cover or furnish with a roof.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. (Arch.) The cover of any building, including the roofing (see roofing) and all the materials and construction necessary to carry and maintain the same upon the walls or other uprights. In the case of a building with vaulted ceilings protected by an outer roof, some writers call the vault the roof, and the outer protection the roof mask. It is better, however, to consider the vault as the ceiling only, in cases where it has farther covering.
2. n. That which resembles, or corresponds to, the covering or the ceiling of a house
3. n. (Mining.) The surface or bed of rock immediately overlying a bed of coal or a flat vein.
4. v. To cover with a roof.
5. v. To inclose in a house; figuratively, to shelter.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. the inner top surface of a covered area or hollow space
2. n. protective covering on top of a motor vehicle
3. v. provide a building with a roof; cover a building with a roof
4. n. a protective covering that covers or forms the top of a building
5. n. an upper limit on what is allowed