family roof

plural family roofs

1. datedhistoricalA large, old-fashioned model of umbrella.

   1868, Frances Parthenope Verney, Stone Edge, Smith, Elder & Co. (publ.), page 56. And he took the big family roof and held it over them both.

   1 more example

   Off went Dick, returning in two minutes with mamma's pretty sun-umbrella, papa's silk one with the ivory handle, and Dinah's family roof, an immense structure of whalebone and cotton, originally green, now faded and streaked with blue, black and yellow, till it looked like one vast bruise, — the stick as tough and substantial as Dinah herself, the handle an immense brass hook that Squeers himself might have envied.

   1873 September, Ellis Gray, “Up, or Down?”, in Our Young Folks, volume IX, number IX, page 561

2. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see family, roof.