unroof

present singular third person unroofs · participle present unroofing · participle past unroofed · past unroofed

1. To remove a roof from, e.g. a building.

   The rabble should have first unroof'd the city, / Ere so prevail'd with me:

   c. 1608–1609 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedy of Coriolanus”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act I, scene i]

   3 more examples

   Here Stuarts once in glory reigned, / And laws for Scotland's weal ordained; / But now unroof'd their palace stands, / Their sceptre's sway'd by other hands;

   1787, Robert Burns, Written by Somebody on the Window of an Inn at Stirling, 1-4

   […] Rain-logged, wind-unroofed, / The manor farm hulked its last use / As landmark. […]

   1960, Ted Hughes, “Nicholas Ferrer”, in Lupercal, Faber & Faber, page 25

   When the workers rejected these terms, some planters threatened to evict them, and others unroofed cottages and turned estate cattle through the workers’ provision grounds.

   2006, Swithin Wilmot, “'We not slave again': Enslaved Jamaicans in Early Freedom, 1838-1865”, in Marc Kleijwegt, editor, The Faces of Freedom: The Manumission and Emancipation of Slaves in Old World and New World Slavery, Brill, page 222