slab
1 Americannoun
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slabs
plural
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a broad, flat, somewhat thick piece of stone, wood, or other solid material.
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a thick slice of anything.
a slab of bread.
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a semifinished piece of iron or steel so rolled that its breadth is at least twice its thickness.
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a rough outside piece cut from a log, as when sawing one into boards.
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Baseball Slang. rubber.
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Building Trades. a section of concrete pavement or a concrete floor placed directly on the ground or on a base of gravel.
verb (used with object)
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slabs,
present (3rd person singular)
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slabbed,
past participle, past
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slabbing
present participle
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to make into a slab or slabs.
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to cover or lay with slabs.
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to cut the slabs or outside pieces from (a log).
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to put on in slabs; cover thickly.
adjective
noun
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a broad flat thick piece of wood, stone, or other material
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a thick slice of cake, etc
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any of the outside parts of a log that are sawn off while the log is being made into planks
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mountaineering a flat sheet of rock lying at an angle of between 30° and 60° from the horizontal
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a printer's ink table
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(modifier) made or constructed of coarse wooden planks
a slab hut
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informal an operating or mortuary table
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informal a package containing 24 cans of beer
verb
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to cut or make into a slab or slabs
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to cover or lay with slabs
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to saw slabs from (a log)
Other Word Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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slabsimple
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slabssimple
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have slabbedperfect
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has slabbedperfect
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am slabbingprogressive
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are slabbingprogressive
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is slabbingprogressive
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have been slabbingperfect progressive
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has been slabbingperfect progressive
Past
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slabbedsimple
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had slabbedperfect
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was slabbingprogressive
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were slabbingprogressive
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had been slabbingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of slab1
First recorded in 1250–1300; Middle English noun slab(be), sclabbe; further origin unknown
Origin of slab2
First recorded in 1595–1605; apparently from Scandinavian; compare Swedish, Norwegian slabb “mire,” Danish slab “mud,” Icelandic slabba “to wade in mud”
Explanation
A slab is a great big thick piece of something. Your backyard patio, for example, might be made of a huge slab of concrete. A sidewalk is often composed of one cement slab after another — these are sometimes called paving slabs. You could refer to large pieces of stone or wood as slabs too. Even your lunch might be a slab, if it's a thick hunk of cheesy pizza or a huge slab of bread slathered with peanut butter. The origins of the word slab are unknown, though we do know it's been around since the thirteenth century.
Vocabulary lists containing slab
Words to Know Before You Defrost the Bird
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Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
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A Single Shard
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
The golden slab loses a few crumbs over the tablecloth when cut and grabbed.
From Salon ● Aug. 11, 2026
Scotland's largest city is set to welcome more than 3,000 athletes from 10 sports, all of whom have the ambition of leaving with a slab of metal resting on their chest.
From BBC ● Jul. 22, 2026
In the classroom, trainees crowded around instructor Luo Duocheng as he demonstrated slicing a slab of beef, marinating it, and skewering the meat to form identical kebabs.
From Barron's ● Jul. 2, 2026
A 20-foot slab of sidewalk is pitched sharply, as if designed by trip-and-fall lawsuit lawyers.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 13, 2026
At the base of the slab he flattened himself and perked his ears uphill.
From "Pax" by Sara Pennypacker
However, her rescue was complicated by the fact that four heavy concrete slabs were blocking the way.
From BBC ● Aug. 12, 2026
These workers are developing silicosis, a condition in which microscopic silica dust contained in the stone slabs they grind and polish is cutting up the inside of their lungs until the organs fail.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 12, 2026
A blackened mattress, a twisted bicycle, a crushed sofa and toys protrude between two stacked concrete slabs.
From Barron's ● Jul. 4, 2026
But it was teams of firefighters and rescue workers from Venezuela, Colombia, Mexico, the Dominican Republic and the U.S. who crawled through slabs of concrete in search of survivors.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 28, 2026
Mr. Grote skins and guts the animals in several fluid motions, then hands me tiny hearts and livers, slabs of deep red meat.
From "Orphan Train" by Christina Baker Kline
Father Ariel’s jaunty voice echoed from where he was standing at the slabbed marble pulpit, as he smiled out at the congregation.
From Salon ● Mar. 31, 2024
For one thing Murray was rake-thin and slouchy, a gangly kid next to the slabbed and ripped power-players of the modern men’s game.
From The Guardian ● Jan. 11, 2019
Great sheets of it are slabbed up in front of government buildings and on the "peace line" that separates the Catholic Falls Road from the Protestant Shankill.
From Time Magazine Archive
At times, you become almost certain that you slabbed this hillside three days ago, crossed this stream yesterday, clambered over this fallen tree at least twice today already.
From "A Walk in the Woods" by Bill Bryson
It was a slabbed house, with shingled roof, and space enough for two rooms; but the partition was n't up.
From On Our Selection by Steele Rudd
The work of it was treated as a burden: the parting, the slabbing sulfur-scented grease to scalp for detangling, the heat pressing into a more manageable texture.
From Salon ● Jan. 31, 2021
Such a road can be very easily and cheaply built by bringing in a portable sawmill and slabbing the material on two sides to the desired face.
From Motor Truck Logging Methods Engineering Experiment Station Series, Bulletin No. 12 by Frederick Malcolm Knapp
These, too far off to supply wood for firing or slabbing, still stood green and timbered, and looked down upon the havoc that had been made of the fair, pastoral lands.
From Australia Felix by Henry Handel Richardson
Martha's cooking and the heavy work were slabbing muscle onto Waziri's lean, brown frame.
From Blind Man's Lantern by George Luther Schelling
Numbers 3 and 4 are for slabbing or converting round logs into square timber.
From Modern Machine-Shop Practice, Volumes I and II by Joshua Rose
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
