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:
The military released what it said was drone footage from inside the tunnel, which showed several rooms, a bathroom, rocket casings and a lathe.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 17, 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
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
Returning from the lavatory later, he found the word “RAT” written on the side of his lathe.
From "Middlesex: A Novel" by Jeffrey Eugenides
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
“It was full of joiners and had the best tools and lathes to do anything he needed or wanted to do.”
From Washington Post ● Apr. 23, 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
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
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
It was considered a great advance and a matter of proper pride when the settlers had the meeting-house "lathed on the inside, and so daubed and whitened over workmanlike."
From Sabbath in Puritan New England by Alice Morse Earle
The milk room is plastered on the inside, the plaster being applied directly to the brick walls, excepting in the case of the ceiling, which is lathed.
From Economy of the Round Dairy Barn by Wilber John Fraser
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
There is something to play with in masonry—every stone is different—but to learn order by lathing and plastering!
From Child and Country A Book of the Younger Generation by Will Levington Comfort
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Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
