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.
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
First recorded in 1325–75; Middle English, from Old French (of Germanic origin); cognate with Old Norse gafl; compare Old English gafol, geafel “a fork”
A gable is the triangular part of a house's exterior wall that supports a pointed or peaked roof. Gothic-style houses are well known for their many gables. Houses and buildings with pitched roofs have front-facing or side-facing gables — or often, both. The shape and structure of these pointed gables help support a house's roof and give the building a particular architectural style. Nathaniel Hawthorne famously wrote about a building with this architectural feature in The House of the Seven Gables. Gable, originally an Old French word meaning "facade or front," is from the Old Norse gafl, "gable-end," or "gable."
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Among them are working drawings that prescribe the profile of every block of stone, each keyed to its exact place in the building, whether gable, tracery or buttress.
From The Wall Street Journal • Feb. 18, 2026
The mural, which was created by artist collective Peaball, is located on a gable wall of the Pram Centre.
From BBC • Nov. 30, 2024
Todd Brunner buys this home, with three upstairs bedrooms and a steep, gable roof, in the spring of 2003.
From Salon • Nov. 17, 2022
The countertops are reclaimed white oak, and the sink is soapstone from Albemarle County, Va. A stone gable wall with a seven-foot cooking fireplace was built from stones on the property.
From Washington Post • Jun. 3, 2022
He went back to the gable and stood studying what he could see of the house beyond the corner of the barn.
From "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy
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.
