shingle

/ˈʃɪŋ.ɡəl/

shingle 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.

Image: Matěj Baťha, CC BY-SA 2.5, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun (1)

shingle (plural shingles)

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.
- I reached St. Asaph, a Bishop's See, where there is a very poor Cathedral Church, covered with Shingles or Tiles1760, John Ray, Select Remains of the Learned John Ray, M.A. and F.R.S., page 123
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).
- He [...] hung a shingle as a barber.2016, Colson Whitehead, The Underground Railroad, Fleet (2017), page 311
- When [these attorneys] were born, in the early decades of the 19th century, being a lawyer meant putting out a shingle and representing your neighbors.2022, Peter S. Canellos, interviewed by Ronald Collins in eGreater than Holmes? The life and legacy of John Marshall Harlan, SCOTUSblog, April 13 2022
A word-based n-gram.
- In the second phase, we produce a list of all the shingles and the documents they appear in, sorted by shingle value.1997 September 1, Andrei Z. Broder, Steven C. Glassman, Mark S. Manasse, Geoffrey Zweig, “Syntactic clustering of the Web”, in Computer Networks and ISDN Systems (Papers from the Sixth International...

Verb (1)

shingle (third-person singular simple present shingles, present participle shingling, simple past and past participle shingled)

(transitive) To cover with small, thin pieces of building material, with shingles.
(transitive) To cut, as hair, so that the ends are evenly exposed all over the head, like shingles on a roof.
(transitive) To increase the storage density of (a hard disk) by writing tracks that partially overlap.

Verb (2)

shingle (third-person singular simple present shingles, present participle shingling, simple past and past participle shingled)

(transitive) To hammer and squeeze material in order to expel cinder and impurities from it, as in metallurgy.
(transitive) To beat with a shingle.

Noun (2)

shingle (plural shingles)

A punitive strap such as a belt.
(broadly) Any paddle used for corporal punishment.

Noun (3)

shingle (countable and uncountable, plural shingles)

Small, smooth pebbles, as found on a beach.
- And naked shingles of the world.1867, Matthew Arnold, Dover Beach
- You need to excavate and remove the topsoil, line the subsoil with a geotextile, then lay and compact hardcore. Follow this with a layer of compacted "hoggin" – compacted clay, gravel and sand. This is then sprayed with hot bitumen, and has a layer of pea shingle rolled into it.2014 August 24, Jeff Howell, “Home improvements: gravel paths and cutting heating bills [print version: Cold comfort in technology, 23 August 2014, p. P5]”, in The Daily Telegraph (Property)
A beach or other shore covered with loose, smooth pebbles.
- Underneath a black cliff where the incoming tide smashed on the shingle, they stumbled upon the mail hood of Hrothgar's murdered vassal.1961, Norma Lorre Goodrich, “Beowulf”, in The Medieval Myths, New York: The New American Library, page 35

shingle meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Marathi and Urdu

shingle in Tamil

small, smooth pebbles: கூழாங்கல் kūḻāṅkal

shingle in Urdu

شنگل

More languagesFewer languages

shingle in Bengali: শিঙ্গল, শিংল
shingle in Telugu: షింగిల్, షింగల్
shingle in Malayalam: ഷിംഗിൾ, ഷിങ്കിൾ
shingle in Kannada: ನೊರಜುಕಲ್ಲು, ಹರಳುಕಲ್ಲು, ಮರಹೆಂಚು, ತೆಳುವಾದ ಹಲಗೆ
shingle in Gujarati: શિંગલ, શીંગલ, શિંગેલ
shingle in Odia: ଶିଙ୍ଗଲ୍, ଶିଙ୍ଗଲ
shingle in Nepali: शिङ्गेल
shingle in Persian: شینگل šingel

Examples of shingle in a sentence

The slope of an asphalt shingle roof system should be 4:12 or greater.
She's good enough at fixing vacuum cleaners that she should hang out her shingle and try making some money at it.
On the other bank, opposite our camp, a chaikhana is set on a pile of shingle.

All 16 example sentences with shingle

Forms of shingle

Noun
plural	shingles
alternative form	shindle
Verb
third-person singular present	shingles
present participle	shingling
past participle	shingled
past	shingled

Plural of shingle: shingles

Origin of shingle

From Middle English shyngel, alteration of Old English sċindel, from Proto-West Germanic *skindulā, borrowed from Late Latin scindula, from Latin scandula, from Proto-Indo-European *sked- (“to split, scatter”), from *sek- (“to cut”). Doublet of shindle.

From dialectal French chingler (“to strap, whip”), from Latin cingula (“girt, belt”), from cingere (“to girt”).

From Middle English shingel, chingel, singel (“gravel, pebbles”), 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.

Words formed from shingle

Phrases with shingle

Words that rhyme with shingle

26 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about shingle

What does shingle mean?: Shingle means 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.
What is shingle in Hindi?: Shingle in Hindi is शिंगल. See Shingle meaning in Hindi.
What part of speech is shingle?: Shingle can be a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce shingle?: Shingle is pronounced /ˈʃɪŋ.ɡəl/ (UK).
What is the plural of shingle?: The plural of shingle is shingles.

Words near shingle in the dictionary

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-shingle.wav.

Cite this entry: “shingle.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/shingle. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.