slab
/slab
/noun
1A large, thick, flat piece of stone or concrete, typically square or rectangular in shape: paving slabs she settled on a slab of rock...
- Massive concrete floor slabs provide thermal storage, collecting heat and giving it off again later on.
- Concrete paving slabs, available from the big DIY chains, can look almost as good as the real thing.
- A concrete slab on grade or floor is going to crack.
1.1A flat, heavy table top or counter, used during the preparation or display of food: a fishmonger’s slab...
- There is a room divider topped with an enormous slab of black granite, to neatly bisect the dining area.
1.2British A table used for laying a body on in a mortuary: he averted his eyes from the corpse on the slab...
- Some churches are as warm and inviting as a mortuary slab.
- She begins to experiment, creating casts of mortuary slabs as well as mundane household objects.
- Whiteread cast them from two mortuary slabs which she had bought from a salvage yard in Hackney.
1.3 Climbing A large, smooth body of rock lying at a sharp angle to the horizontal: he handled the rope competently and set out up the centre of the slab...
- Start at the lowest rocks and climb the slabs above until stopped by a smooth bulge.
- A small lip guarded the final corner, which lead to a very smooth slab.
- Jake climbed up onto the slab of rock again and sat there with his legs crossed, staring down at me.
2A large, thick slice or piece of cake, bread, chocolate, etc. a slab of bread and cheese...
- Stuff it into a red bell pepper instead of sandwiching it between two slabs of Wonder bread.
- We enjoyed it with a slab of delicious chocolate cake.
- There is something utterly indulgent, delicious and satisfying about a slab of chocolate cake.
Synonyms
piece, block, hunk, chunk, lump;
portion;
cake, tablet, brick, wodge
3An outer piece of timber sawn from a log: the slabs I trimmed away from the logs became the siding for the cabin walls...
- There was raw chicken on a driftwood slab for this farewell meal too.
- This is where we met them, crawling out of timber slab houses.
- Now we were before the great hall itself, and I looked up at timber walls made of slabs of oak four times my height.
4Australian /NZ informal A pack containing 24 bottles or cans of beer.Winner gets a free slab of beer and all the pies that they can eat....
- There were hundreds, if not thousands, of megalitres being traded for one slab of beer.
- Load up the ute with two spare tyres and a few slabs of beer, we're off on a virtual road trip through the history of life.
verb (slabs, slabbing, slabbed) [with object] (often as noun slabbing)
Remove slabs from (a log or tree) to prepare it for sawing into planks: a well-centred log is more secure for improved slabbing performance...
- The company has developed and supplies a unique slabbing system.
Derivatives
slabby
- As they begin to climb the succession of slabby cliffs and steep grassy slopes, Dickey turns to his companions and says, ‘We gotta whack this guy, tonight.’
- It gets better and better, the water cutting deeper into the curved and hollowed rock, with slabby undercuts and terraced waterfalls.
- The side view would be slabby except that it is broken well by a crease along the doorhandle lines and a well-placed rubbing strip.
Origin
Middle English: of unknown origin.