gable
- the portion of the front or side of a building enclosed by or masking the end of a pitched roof.
- a decorative member suggesting a gable, used especially in Gothic architecture.
- Also called gable wall. a wall bearing a gable.
Origin of gable
Gable
- (William) Clark,1901–60, U.S. film actor.
Related Words for gable
house, ceiling, parapet, covering, shelter, slate, crown, dome, cupola, summit, rafter, canopy, truss, gable, palate, gambrelExamples from the Web for gable
Contemporary Examples of gable
The trouble with Gable was that he was under contract to MGM.
The same violent, primal appeal appeared on-screen and off-screen with Gable.
You did not playfully invite Gable in for sex hoping he would be courteous.
My mother also liked GWTW because she thought that Gable was “almost as handsome as Duke Ellington.”
Historical Examples of gable
One of the ground-floor windows at the gable end of the house was open.
Casanova's HomecomingArthur Schnitzler
The gable walls of the transepts and the western wall are also Turkish.
Byzantine Churches in ConstantinopleAlexander Van Millingen
You'll find him lying in the garret at the west end of the gable—drunk.
A Son of HagarSir Hall Caine
If he heard a sigh from the dairy loft, he sat down against the gable and groaned.
The ManxmanHall Caine
Always used of the gable loft, you know, and the wind above the thatch.
The ManxmanHall Caine
gable
- the triangular upper part of a wall between the sloping ends of a pitched roof (gable roof)
- a triangular ornamental feature in the form of a gable, esp as used over a door or window
- the triangular wall on both ends of a gambrel roof
Word Origin for gable
Gable
- (William) Clark. 1901–60, US film actor. His films include It Happened One Night (1934), San Francisco (1936), Gone with the Wind (1939), Mogambo (1953), and The Misfits (1960)
Word Origin and History for gable
mid-14c., from Old French gable "facade, front, gable," from Old Norse gafl "gable, gable-end" (in north of England, the word is probably directly from Norse), probably from Proto-Germanic *gablaz "top of a pitched roof" (cf. Middle Dutch ghevel, Dutch gevel, Old High German gibil, German Geibel, Gothic gibla "gable"), from PIE *ghebhel.
Cognates seem to be words meaning both "fork" (cf. Old English gafol, geafel, Old Saxon gafala, Dutch gaffel, Old High German gabala "pitchfork," German Gabel "fork;" Old Irish gabul "forked twig") and "head" (cf. Old High German gibilla, Old Saxon gibillia "skull").
Possibly the primitive meaning of the words may have been 'top', 'vertex'; this may have given rise to the sense of 'gable', and this latter to the sense of 'fork', a gable being originally formed by two pieces of timber crossed at the top supporting the end of the roof-tree." [OED]
Related: Gabled; gables.