house-top

plural house-tops

1. archaicArchaic form of housetop.

   It was a foggy, cloudy morning, and a dun-coloured veil hung over the house-tops, looking like the reflection of the mud-coloured streets beneath.

   1887, A[rthur] Conan Doyle, “A Study in Scarlet”, in Beeton’s Christmas Annual, London; New York, N.Y.: Ward, Lock & Co., part I (Being a reprint from the reminiscences of John H. Watson, M.D., […]), chapter III (The Lauriston Gardens Mystery), page 17

   4 more examples

   The pantomime scenes are well arranged, especially a view of house-tops, where a good deal of comic business takes place, ending with a wholesale slaughter of cats and irruption of bed-gowned and disturbed sleepers.

   1852 January 3, “The Drama”, in The Literary Gazette and Journal of Belles Lettres, Science, and Art, for the Year 1852, number 1824, London: Reeve and Co., […], page 22

   They drove to shelter all citizens possessed of homes, while the belated ones, or the unfortunates, were pursued and buffeted with a fiendish delight that found expression in wild shrieks; and up the street and over the house-tops they would sweep, meeting other winds tearing round corners and whirling into each other, making lesser storms that sent up in circles snow, soot, and lighter garbage far into the murky night.

   1888, Donn Piatt, “The Sales-Lady of the City”, in The Lone Grave of the Shenandoah and Other Tales, Chicago, Ill.; […]: Belford, Clarke & Co., →OCLC, page 86

   Long, long did the child lie in her little bed, awake, listening with a throbbing little heart for the sledge bells of Saint Claus, and the sound of the reindeers’ feet pattering over the house-top.

   1899, by “Kit”, “Holy Saint Claus”, in The Canadian Magazine of Politics, Science, Art and Literature, volume 12, page 159, column 2

   The spring and the winter came unsought into every man's life, not as they come to-day, wayfarers bewandered among the house-tops, feebly whispering of unknown things in far salubrious lands, […]

   1907, Charles Frederick Gurney Masterman, The Heart of the empire