shingle

Meanings

Noun

• 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.
• A rectangular piece of steel obtained by means of a shingling process involving hammering of puddled steel.
• 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).
• A punitive strap such as a belt.
• Any paddle used for corporal punishment.
• Small, smooth pebbles, as found on a beach.

Verb

• To cover with small, thin pieces of building material, with shingles.
• To cut, as hair, so that the ends are evenly exposed all over the head, like shingles on a roof.
• To increase the storage density of (a hard disk) by writing tracks that partially overlap.
• To hammer and squeeze material in order to expel cinder and impurities from it, as in metallurgy.
• To beat with a shingle.

Origin

• From Middle English scincle, from Vulgar Latin scindula, from Latin scandula, from Proto-Indo-European *skhed- ("to split, scatter"), from *sek-.
• From dialectal French chingler ("to strap, whip"), from Latin cingula ("girt, belt"), from cingere.
• Probably cognate with Norwegian Bokmål singel ("pebble(s)"), Norwegian Nynorsk singel ("pebble(s)"), and North Frisian singel ("gravel"), imitative of the sound of water running over such pebbles.