Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun 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.
  • noun Girth; hence, the waist; the middle.
  • noun 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.
  • noun A small sign-board, especially that of a professional man: as, to hang out one's shingle.
  • To cover with shingles: as, to shingle a roof.
  • 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.
  • In puddling iron, to hammer roughly or squeeze (the ball of metal).

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun (Geol.) Round, water-worn, and loose gravel and pebbles, or a collection of roundish stones, such as are common on the seashore and elsewhere.
  • transitive verb To subject to the process of shindling, as a mass of iron from the pudding furnace.
  • noun 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.
  • noun Jocose, U. S. A sign for an office or a shop.
  • noun (Bot.) a kind of oak (Quercus imbricaria) used in the Western States for making shingles.
  • transitive verb To cover with shingles.
  • transitive verb To cut, as hair, so that the ends are evenly exposed all over the head, as shingles on a roof.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun 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.
  • noun A rectangular piece of steel obtained by means of a shingling process involving hammering of puddled steel.
  • noun 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).
  • verb transitive To cover with small, thin pieces of building material, with shingles.
  • noun Small, smooth pebbles, as found on a beach.
  • verb transitive, manufacturing To hammer and squeeze material in order to expel cinder and impurities from it, as in metallurgy.
  • verb To lash with a shingle.
  • noun A punitive strap such as a belt, as used for severe spanking
  • noun by extension Any paddle used for corporal punishment

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

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

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English scincle, from Latin scindula, an alteration, influenced by the Ancient Greek σχίδαξ 'lath' (compare σχίζα, σχίσμα, σχίζω), of the Latin scandula ("roof tile"), from scindere ("to split"), from Proto-Indo-European *sked- (“to split”).

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Probably cognate to the Norwegian singl ("small stones") or the North Frisian singel ("gravel"), both imitative of the sound of water running over such pebbles.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From French dialect chingler ("to strap, whip"), from Latin cingula ("girt, belt"), from cingere ("to girt")

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Examples

Comments

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  • 'Will you walk a little faster?' said a whiting to a snail,

    'There's a porpoise close behind us, and he's treading on my tail.

    See how eagerly the lobsters and the turtles all advance!

    They are waiting on the shingle - will you come and join the dance?

    Will you, won't you, will you, won't you, will you join the dance?

    Will you, won't you, will you, won't you, won't you join the dance?'

    - Lewis Carroll, 'The Lobster Quadrille'.

    November 8, 2008