lathe
Americannoun
-
lathes
plural
verb (used with object)
-
lathes,
present (3rd person singular)
-
lathed,
past participle, past
-
lathing
present participle
noun
verb
noun
Other Word Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
-
lathesimple
-
lathessimple
-
have lathedperfect
-
has lathedperfect
-
am lathingprogressive
-
are lathingprogressive
-
is lathingprogressive
-
have been lathingperfect progressive
-
has been lathingperfect progressive
Past
-
lathedsimple
-
had lathedperfect
-
was lathingprogressive
-
were lathingprogressive
-
had been lathingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of lathe
1300–50; Middle English: frame, stand, lathe; compare Old Norse hlath stack ( see lade), Danish -lad in væverlad weaver's batten, savelad saw bench
Explanation
A lathe is a tool that shapes a rotating piece of wood or metal. If you want to build a beautiful dining room table, you'll need a lathe to make the legs. Using a lathe, you can cut, drill, or sand wood while it turns—making the piece more symmetrical than it would be without the tool. A potter's wheel, which turns clay as you shape it with your hands, is actually a type of lathe. Many common objects are made using lathes, including baseball bats, some musical instruments, and candlesticks. A person who uses a lathe is officially called a turner.
Vocabulary lists containing lathe
Mechanical Engineering
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Visual Arts - High School
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Visual Arts - Middle School
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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:
A farmer who owned a Model T didn’t need a forge or metal lathe to fix his engine; he could simply order a replacement part—or cannibalize one from a wrecked car in a junkyard.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 5, 2025
To do the work, the team used a large lathe to spin a detached brake rotor and caliper.
From Science Daily ● Mar. 12, 2024
Or looked down at the raw concrete underfoot, or around at unadorned columns and brick walls that never were meant to be seen, sheathed originally with lathe and plaster and decorative molding?
From Seattle Times ● Sep. 8, 2023
Standing on a blanket of sawdust in the Los Angeles Fashion District woodshop she shares with two other woodworkers, Julie Jackson puts on a protective face shield and turns on her lathe.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 2, 2023
He even hid a few provisions in the storage cabinet of his lathe so we would have something to eat if and when we arrived.
From "The Boy on the Wooden Box" by Leon Leyson
The workrooms contained metal lathes, hand tools and grey casings, but it was not possible to verify what had been made there.
From Reuters ● Nov. 9, 2023
On the day Shapiro practiced the moiré pattern, an industrial clamor emanated from an adjacent room that houses CNC mills and CNC lathes, which are used to fabricate watch components.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 22, 2023
But she could not stop thinking about glass engraving so went to the back door of the Edinburgh College of Art, which had rejected her, to beg to use their lathes.
From BBC ● Jan. 15, 2023
There, Mr. Brush turned his focus to metals and jewels, crossing artistic boundaries with a steadily growing collection of antique lathes and tools.
From Washington Post ● Dec. 12, 2022
Presently the doorbell rang, and soon the room was filling up with fashionably dressed lathes and handsome or distinguished men.
From "The Golden Compass" by Philip Pullman
The crucible was lathed out of a solid block of graphite, a form of carbon which conducts electricity well.
From Time Magazine Archive
There was a smell of lubrication and lathed brass.
From "The Martian Chronicles" by Ray Bradbury
The buildings here are much of the same cast as at Parramatta, being in general weather boarded without, and lathed and plastered within.
The home consisted of one large room, not yet lathed and plastered.
From Eighty Years and More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 by Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Gone—pushed aside by the march of civilization; supplanted by the modern lathed and plastered attic, with its smoothly laid floor, which harbors neither mice nor memories.
From The Complete Home by Clara E. (Clara Elizabeth) Laughlin
They talked amid the exposed plaster lathing for nearly an hour, then for half an hour more in the street out front.
From Washington Post ● Jan. 26, 2017
For the first six to eight months, I worked at lathing the bottoms of cymbals.
From New York Times ● Oct. 1, 2016
The painting is moving and I’m kind of standing still like a workman on his lathe, lathing a piece of wood.
From Forbes ● Sep. 24, 2014
The walls were stripped down to their lathing, and the new plaster was hand-buffed with beeswax, creating a sheen that, as Ms. Spellman points out, “looks incredible in candlelight.”
From New York Times ● Aug. 8, 2010
Johnny was all eyes for a tall stack of lathing in bundles and for a pile of sacks filled with hair from cows' hides, which last was to go into plaster.
From On the Stairs by Henry Blake Fuller
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.
