clapboard
/ˈklapbɔːd
/ /ˈklabəd /noun chiefly North American
1A long, thin, flat piece of wood with edges horizontally overlapping in series, used to cover the outer walls of buildings: [as modifier]: neat clapboard houses...
- This courthouse consisted of a two-story woodframe building covered with clapboards, resting on a foundation of stone blocks.
- Eventually, we're directed to a clapboard hut on the edge of town where a pair of women in bright turbans stir two large cauldrons with paddles.
- Within ten minutes the stagecoach rocked back into motion and sent a cloud of dust and dirt and grit billowing skywards across the yard towards the gray clapboard building.
1.1 informal A house with outer walls covered in clapboards.She reminded me of one of those beauties who sometimes emerge from hard country clapboards or trash-strewn double-wides.
Derivatives
clapboarded
- The two-and-one half story, five-bay, clapboarded house has been considerably altered since its completion in 1794, and now has a mid-nineteenth-century recessed main entrance and a late nineteenth-century porch on the east end.
- According to the Reverend Rose's only child, Helen Cromwell Rose, he was drawn to the old clapboarded and shingled farmhouse that stood on the property ‘Its wealth of tradition was deeply welded into my father's heart,’ she wrote.
- The town of Hancock is especially distinguished for its beautiful Federal style houses, some of them brick and some clapboarded.
Origin
Early 16th century (denoting a piece of oak used for barrel staves or wainscot): partial translation of Low German klappholt 'barrel stave', from klappen 'to crack' + holt 'wood'.