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
But there is a wooden cross that Jimmy Carter fashioned in his woodshop and offering plates that he turned on his lathe.
From Seattle Times ● Nov. 28, 2023
His scale model of a steam locomotive from the lathe at the mill won a magazine competition.
From BBC ● May 21, 2023
Just as John-go-in-the-Wynd had said, it was harder to turn the keys on the lathe so they would fit exactly.
From "The Door in the Wall" by Marguerite de Angeli
Customers in Uganda want more tools and equipment, including lathes and water pumps.
From Seattle Times ● May 19, 2024
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
Powerful lathes grind blocks of steel into sharp-toothed gears and screws.
From BBC ● Nov. 7, 2022
His Innovation Workshop in Atlanta is a neat grid of computerized lathes, battery boxes, drills, metal shavings and computer screens that spin special effects in three dimensions.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 23, 2019
Quentin and I followed him through the shop, his machinists busy at their drill presses and milling machines and lathes.
From "October Sky" by Homer Hickam
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
Their fronts were open piazzas, their sides were lathed and plastered, sometimes with white marl, sometimes with reddish clay, and they had plank doors and were roofed neatly with cypress bark or clapboards.
From The Winning of the West, Volume 1 From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 by Theodore Roosevelt
The house was substantially built; the walls formed of strong upright posts, lathed across, plastered with mud and whitewashed, and the roof tiled.
From The Naturalist on the River Amazons by Henry Walter Bates
This is not so, as it was a frame structure, weather-boarded on the outside, and lathed and plastered on the inside, with a stone foundation.
From Some Reminiscences of old Victoria by Edgar Fawcett
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.
