lath

plural laths · alternative Scotland lat · alternative Scotland latt

1. A thin, narrow strip, fastened to the rafters, studs, or floor beams of a building, for the purpose of supporting a covering of tiles, plastering, etc.

   "You are as thin as a lath and as brown as a nut."

   1887, Arthur Conan Doyle, A Study in Scarlet

   4 more examples

   It is a piece of wood furnished with two parallel rows of plates, folding over each other, so as to resemble, in some degree, the laths of a blind.

   1847, editorial staff, “Swimming Skate”, in Scientific American, series 1, Volume 3, Issue 9, page 68

   What do you see?—Posted like silent sentinels all around the town, stand thousands upon thousands of mortal men fixed in ocean reveries. Some leaning against the spiles [...] some high aloft in the rigging, as if striving to get a still better seaward peep. But these are all landsmen; of week days pent up in lath and plaster—tied to counters, nailed to benches, clinched to desks.

   1851 November 14, Herman Melville, “chapter 1”, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC

   The rubble waits him, sloping up to broken rear walls in a clogging, an openwork of laths pointlessly chevroning-flooring, furniture, glass, chunks of plaster, long tatters of wallpaper, split and shattered joists […].

   1973, Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow

   Lanna says about wishing she was bigger in the chest and I goes that I had nothing to beat there and I was thin as a lat.

   1995, Alan Warner, Morvern Callar, Vintage, published 2015, page 21

   Synonyms: batten

2. geographyMicroscopic, needle-like crystals, usually of plagioclase feldspar, in a glassy groundmass
3. businessOne of the sharp-edged, thick planks driven forward to hold back loose earth or mud when digging the way through for tunnelling or spiling. Also called a spill.

present singular third person laths · participle present lathing · participle past lathed · past lathed · alternative Scotland lat · alternative Scotland latt

1. transitiveTo cover or line with laths.

plural laths

1. alternativeAlternative form of lat (“staff; monumental pillar”).