shingle

plural shingles · alternative shindle

1. 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.

   I reached St. Asaph, a Bishop's See, where there is a very poor Cathedral Church, covered with Shingles or Tiles

   1760, John Ray, Select Remains of the Learned John Ray, M.A. and F.R.S., page 123

2. A rectangular piece of steel obtained by means of a shingling process involving hammering of puddled steel.
3. 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).

   He [...] hung a shingle as a barber.

   2016, Colson Whitehead, The Underground Railroad, Fleet (2017), page 311

   1 more example

   When [these attorneys] were born, in the early decades of the 19th century, being a lawyer meant putting out a shingle and representing your neighbors.

   2022, Peter S. Canellos, interviewed by Ronald Collins in eGreater than Holmes? The life and legacy of John Marshall Harlan, SCOTUSblog, April 13 2022

4. computationalA word-based n-gram.

   In the second phase, we produce a list of all the shingles and the documents they appear in, sorted by shingle value.

   1997 September 1, Andrei Z. Broder, Steven C. Glassman, Mark S. Manasse, Geoffrey Zweig, “Syntactic clustering of the Web”, in Computer Networks and ISDN Systems (Papers from the Sixth International World Wide Web Conference), volume 29, number 8, →DOI, →ISSN, pages 1157–1166

present singular third person shingles · participle present shingling · participle past shingled · past shingled · alternative shindle

1. transitiveTo cover with small, thin pieces of building material, with shingles.
2. transitiveTo cut, as hair, so that the ends are evenly exposed all over the head, like shingles on a roof.
3. transitiveTo increase the storage density of (a hard disk) by writing tracks that partially overlap.

present singular third person shingles · participle present shingling · participle past shingled · past shingled

1. transitivebusinessTo hammer and squeeze material in order to expel cinder and impurities from it, as in metallurgy.
2. transitiveTo beat with a shingle.

plural shingles

1. A punitive strap such as a belt.
2. broadlyAny paddle used for corporal punishment.

plural shingles

1. countableuncountableSmall, smooth pebbles, as found on a beach.

   And naked shingles of the world.

   1867, Matthew Arnold, Dover Beach

   2 more examples

   You need to excavate and remove the topsoil, line the subsoil with a geotextile, then lay and compact hardcore. Follow this with a layer of compacted "hoggin" – compacted clay, gravel and sand. This is then sprayed with hot bitumen, and has a layer of pea shingle rolled into it.

   2014 August 24, Jeff Howell, “Home improvements: gravel paths and cutting heating bills [print version: Cold comfort in technology, 23 August 2014, p. P5]”, in The Daily Telegraph (Property)

   One can't escape the huge nuclear facility at Sellafield (supplier of much of the line's remaining freight traffic), or miss the wild shingle beaches with exposed and precarious bungalows sandwiched between the railway and the shore at Braystones.

   2022 November 2, Paul Bigland, “New trains, old trains, and splendid scenery”, in RAIL, number 969, page 57

2. countableuncountableA beach or other shore covered with loose, smooth pebbles.

   Underneath a black cliff where the incoming tide smashed on the shingle, they stumbled upon the mail hood of Hrothgar's murdered vassal.

   1961, Norma Lorre Goodrich, “Beowulf”, in The Medieval Myths, New York: The New American Library, page 35