tile
Americannoun
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tiles
plural
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a thin slab or bent piece of baked clay, sometimes painted or glazed, used for various purposes, as to form one of the units of a roof covering, floor, or revetment.
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any of various similar slabs or pieces, as of linoleum, stone, rubber, or metal.
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tiles collectively.
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a flat, rectangular playing piece used in certain games, as Scrabble and mah-jongg.
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a pottery tube or pipe used for draining land.
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Also called hollow tile. any of various hollow or cellular units of burnt clay or other materials, as gypsum or cinder concrete, for building walls, partitions, floors, and roofs, or for fireproofing steelwork or the like.
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Informal. a stiff hat or high silk hat.
verb (used with object)
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tiles,
present (3rd person singular)
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tiled,
past participle, past
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tiling
present participle
noun
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a flat thin slab of fired clay, rubber, linoleum, etc, usually square or rectangular and sometimes ornamental, used with others to cover a roof, floor, wall, etc
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a short pipe made of earthenware, concrete, or plastic, used with others to form a drain
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tiles collectively
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a rectangular block used as a playing piece in mah jong and other games
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old-fashioned a hat
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informal on a spree, esp of drinking or debauchery
verb
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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tilesimple
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tilessimple
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have tiledperfect
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has tiledperfect
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am tilingprogressive
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are tilingprogressive
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is tilingprogressive
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have been tilingperfect progressive
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has been tilingperfect progressive
Past
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tiledsimple
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had tiledperfect
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was tilingprogressive
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were tilingprogressive
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had been tilingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of tile
First recorded before 900; Middle English; Old English tīgele (cognate with German Ziegel ), from Latin tēgula
Explanation
A tile is a flat piece of material that's used to cover a roof, floor, or wall. If you're artistic, you can make a mosaic out of small, colorful glass tiles. Most tiles are made out of ceramic, metal, glass, or stone. Many baths and showers are lined with ceramic tiles, and it's also common to find tiles covering bathroom and kitchen floors. Historians have traced tiles back at least as far as the 13th century BCE, in Mesopotamia. To cover a surface in tiles is to tile. Flat, hard game pieces are also commonly known as tiles, like the Scrabble tiles you pick at the beginning of a game. The root of this word means "to cover."
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:
He wanted them to sit inside and learn a tile game?
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 3, 2026
Hardwood floors run throughout the property, including in the bedrooms, save for the entryway which features a terracotta tile and a wrought iron staircase leading up to the second level.
From MarketWatch ● Jul. 23, 2026
On the kitchen walls, the “Lauenstein Yellow” tile cascades down into polychrome patterns.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 21, 2026
"I remember that as a child I climbed up there, all the way to the main roof tile," former salt farmer Omer Hot said, gesturing at the seven-metre-high storehouse roof.
From Barron's ● Jul. 15, 2026
More jam, and shards of glittering glass strewn across the tile.
From "How to Disappear Completely" by Ali Standish
There is the intermittent purr of generators, dogs barking, and, from time to time, the dry clack of domino tiles echoing in the street.
From Barron's ● Aug. 14, 2026
Totoki, 62, grew up in Yamaguchi, a prefecture on the westernmost tip of Japan’s main island famous for lush forests and noodles fried on hot tiles.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 14, 2026
DR20 now includes integral field spectroscopy maps of 6 separate target regions covering 169 tiles and about 300,000 spectra.
From Science Daily ● Aug. 14, 2026
I still find glitter ground into our kitchen tiles from the Halloween when he made his daughter a purple witch costume.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 6, 2026
And about how the only shapes that one can use to tile a floor, if all the tiles are the same, are triangles, squares and hexagons.
From "The Invention of Science" by David Wootton
This country is tiled with adrift twentysomething males, beset with incoherent politics, whose opinion about any issue is generated in the 10 seconds after they’ve been asked the question.
From Slate ● Apr. 13, 2026
Somehow, creaky tiled houses have been wedged here between enormous outcroppings of glacial boulders.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 27, 2026
The tiled pool has a romantic feel, like it’s from another era.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 23, 2026
The chef’s kitchen is the epitome of luxury thanks to its high ceilings adorned in wooden beams, marble tiled flooring, wooden island table, and state-of-the-art appliances.
From MarketWatch ● Jan. 12, 2026
“No,” said Myrtle defiantly, her voice echoing loudly around the old tiled bathroom.
From "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" by J.K. Rowling
Meanwhile the tiling for the kitchen has, Lorenze revealed, been specially created for the couple featuring designs that reflect their passions, interests, and romantic milestones.
From MarketWatch ● Apr. 8, 2026
A student visa for Belarus, available in three weeks for 2.75 million CFA, sought-after tiling jobs in Dubai, and a three-month employment contract in Latvia are just some of the options on the list.
From Barron's ● Oct. 11, 2025
It features a vintage kitchen with pink-and-white tiling, drab olive walls and industrial brown flooring.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 4, 2025
Each layer of the neural network can have its own data tiling configuration.
From Science Daily ● Oct. 30, 2023
Even Holly closed the throttle a notch, dropping until her feet brushed the marble tiling.
From "Artemis Fowl" by Eoin Colfer
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.
