shingle

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. A thin oblong piece of material, such as wood or slate, that is laid in overlapping rows to cover the roof or sides of a house or other building.
2. n. Informal A small signboard, as one indicating a professional office: After passing the bar exam, she hung out her shingle.
3. n. A woman's close-cropped haircut.
4. v. To cover (a roof or building) with shingles.
5. v. To cut (hair) short and close to the head.
6. n. Beach gravel consisting of large smooth pebbles unmixed with finer material.
7. n. A stretch of shore or beach covered with such gravel.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. A thin piece of wood having parallel sides and being thicker at one end than the other, used like a tile or a slate in covering the sides and roofs of houses; a wooden tile. In the United States shingles are usually about 6 inches in width and 18 inches long, and are laid with one third of their length to the weather—that is, with 12 inches of cover and 6 inches of lap.
2. n. A small sign-board, especially that of a professional man: as, to hang out one's shingle.
3. To cover with shingles: as, to shingle a roof.
4. To cut (the hair) so that streaks of it overlap like rows of shingles; hence, to cut (the hair, or the hair of) very close.
5. In puddling iron, to hammer roughly or squeeze (the ball of metal). This is done after the ball is taken from the furnace, in order to press the slag out of it, and prepare it to be rolled into the desired shape.
6. n. A kind of water-worn detritus a little coarser than gravel: a term most generally used with reference to debris on the sea-shore, and much more commonly in the British Islands than in the United States.
7. n. Girth; hence, the waist; the middle.

Wiktionary

1. n. A 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.
2. n. A rectangular piece of steel obtained by means of a shingling process involving hammering of puddled steel.
3. n. A small signboard designating a professional office; this may be both a physical signboard or a metaphoric term for a small production company (a production shingle).
4. v. transitive To cover with small, thin pieces of building material, with shingles.
5. v. transitive, manufacturing To hammer and squeeze material in order to expel cinder and impurities from it, as in metallurgy.
6. v. To lash with a shingle.
7. n. A punitive strap such as a belt, as used for severe spanking
8. n. by extension Any paddle used for corporal punishment
9. n. Small, smooth pebbles, as found on a beach.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. (Geol.) Round, water-worn, and loose gravel and pebbles, or a collection of roundish stones, such as are common on the seashore and elsewhere.
2. n. A piece of wood sawed or rived thin and small, with one end thinner than the other, -- used in covering buildings, especially roofs, the thick ends of one row overlapping the thin ends of the row below.
3. n. Jocose, U. S. A sign for an office or a shop.
4. v. To cover with shingles.
5. v. To cut, as hair, so that the ends are evenly exposed all over the head, as shingles on a roof.
6. v. To subject to the process of shindling, as a mass of iron from the pudding furnace.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. building material used as siding or roofing
2. n. coarse beach gravel of small waterworn stones and pebbles (or a stretch of shore covered with such gravel)
3. n. a small signboard outside the office of a lawyer or doctor, e.g.
4. v. cover with shingles