raftering

Noun

raftering (countable and uncountable, plural rafterings)

1. (UK) The practice by which land is raftered (turning the grass side of each furrow upon an unploughed ridge).
   • It is nearly the same thing on stubble land as raftering is on grass land.1849, John Marius Wilson, The Rural Cyclopedia
   • It is open to doubt whether there is any great advantage, but as it is customary in the districts where raftering is practised to use a primitive scuffler called a Brewer's drag, which is made without any means of adjusting the separate tines, ...1891, Walter James Malden, Tillage, page 47
2. The set of rafters (sloped beams) of a building or similar construction.
   • A simple and very primitive mode of connecting rough rafterings, where all the strength seems to be depending on a pin, is given by Fig. 9.1883, The Building News and Engineering Journal - Volume 45, page 445
   • […] here the white plunge of water down a wall of granite, and there, in bluer depths, a charcoal burner's hut sending up its spiral of smoke to the dark raftering of branches.1902, Edith Wharton, The Valley of Decision, →ISBN