raftering

plural rafterings

1. UKcountableuncountableThe practice by which land is raftered (turning the grass side of each furrow upon an unploughed ridge).

   Raftering is another excellent process.

   1908, Charles Edward Green, D. Young, Encyclopædia of Agriculture

   2 more examples

   It is nearly the same thing on stubble land as raftering is on grass land.

   1849, John Marius Wilson, The Rural Cyclopedia

   It is open to doubt whether there is any great advantage, but as it is customary in the districts where raftering is practised to use a primitive scuffler called a Brewer's drag, which is made without any means of adjusting the separate tines, ...

   1891, Walter James Malden, Tillage, page 47

2. countableuncountableThe set of rafters (sloped beams) of a building or similar construction.

   Not quite diaphanous, not Spanish, not a moss, weft after weft depends from chambered rafterings of live oak, […]

   1989, The New Yorker - Volume 64, Issues 46-52, page 70

   2 more examples

   A simple and very primitive mode of connecting rough rafterings, where all the strength seems to be depending on a pin, is given by Fig. 9.

   1883, The Building News and Engineering Journal - Volume 45, page 445

   […] here the white plunge of water down a wall of granite, and there, in bluer depths, a charcoal burner's hut sending up its spiral of smoke to the dark raftering of branches.

   1902, Edith Wharton, The Valley of Decision, →ISBN

1. gerundparticiplepresentpresent participle and gerund of rafter