shingle
1 Americannoun
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a thin piece of wood, slate, metal, asbestos, or the like, usually oblong, laid in overlapping rows to cover the roofs and walls of buildings.
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a woman's close-cropped haircut.
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Informal. a small signboard, especially as hung before a doctor's or lawyer's office.
verb (used with object)
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to cover with shingles, as a roof.
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to cut (hair) close to the head.
idioms
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hang out one's shingle, to establish a professional practice, especially in law or medicine; open an office.
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have / be a shingle short, to be mentally disturbed, mad, or eccentric.
noun
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small, waterworn stones or pebbles such as lie in loose sheets or beds on a beach.
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a beach, riverbank, or other area covered with such small pebbles or stones.
verb (used with object)
noun
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a thin rectangular tile, esp one made of wood, that is laid with others in overlapping rows to cover a roof or a wall
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a woman's short-cropped hairstyle
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a small signboard or nameplate fixed outside the office of a doctor, lawyer, etc
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informal unintelligent or mentally subnormal
verb
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to cover (a roof or a wall) with shingles
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to cut (the hair) in a short-cropped style
noun
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coarse gravel, esp the pebbles found on beaches
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a place or area strewn with shingle
verb
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of shingle1
First recorded in 1200–50; Middle English scincle, sc(h)ingle, shyngle, ultimately from Latin scindula, variant of scandula “lath, shingle” ( Middle English -g- is unexplained); Latin scindula is due perhaps to association with Greek schíza, schídax “piece of split wood, splinter”
Origin of shingle2
First recorded in 1530–40; apparently variant of earlier chingle; further origin uncertain; but compare North Frisian singel “gravel,” Norwegian singel “small stones”
Origin of shingle3
First recorded in 1665–75; from French cingler “to whip, beat,” from German zängeln “to shingle,” derivative of Zange “pincers, pliers”; see also tong
Explanation
A shingle is a thin piece of wood used in making a roof or a signboard outside an office, especially a doctor’s or lawyer's. If you’re opening a business, hang your shingle outside so people can find you. One kind of shingle is a rectangular piece of wood or other material used to make a roof. The other is a type of small sign outside an office that shows someone is ready to see clients, patients, or other types of customers. The word shingle is from the Latin scindere for "to split,” as in splitting wood, and whatever you do with a shingle, it’s a small flat hunk of wood.
Vocabulary lists containing shingle
Learning Down The House: Parts of Your Home
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The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
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Beowulf
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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:
We hung out an enormous “for sale” shingle and put just about everything on the market.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 6, 2026
In prison, he became devoted to working out; after his release, Mr. James hung out his shingle as a personal trainer.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 1, 2026
My family lived in East Highland Park, Va., just outside of Richmond, in an 800-square-foot house clad in gray asphalt shingle siding.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 9, 2025
Meanwhile, having failed to stop the taxi boat launch on the shingle beach at Audresselles, Colonel Alary was not yet ready to give up either.
From BBC ● Jun. 17, 2025
Then I put the blunt end of the shingle between my teeth, jumped to catch a low branch, and began to climb the tree.
From "The Name of the Wind" by Patrick Rothfuss
At the bar, I built a fantastic $59 meal from the happy-hour menu: hamachi crudo shingled with plums, chicken curry, and truffled brie grilled cheese with mango jam.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 6, 2025
When you imagine a typical American family home, you probably picture something like John Williamson and Sue Spaziani’s house, with its shingled roof and wraparound porch.
From Slate ● Oct. 17, 2024
“It’s not all open vistas of the seas and shingled cottages of the rich. It’s cold, hard, long winters, people having bean suppers at church, traditions that go back to the 1600s.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 30, 2023
The rice is spooned into the bottom of a baking dish, then sliced raw purple and yellow onions are shingled on top.
From New York Times ● Apr. 1, 2022
Uprooted trees, a telephone pole, and the shingled roof of a small shed floated in the water behind the downed section of the bridge, trapped against the steel girder that now angled into the river.
From "Earthquake Terror" by Peg Kehret
For presentation, gingerly prop the tofu against the pork, shingling it out slightly.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 11, 2026
Back east on Cape Cod, where once upon a time my shingling trade migrated, the occasional red cedar roof comes along in the wealthiest of ocean-view neighborhoods.
From Seattle Times ● Mar. 8, 2024
Top each with two thin slices of ham and the cucumbers, shingling the cucumbers neatly on top of each sandwich.
From Washington Post ● Oct. 13, 2022
Using shingling, we transformed the text of articles in both datasets into a list of tokens, and then turned the list of tokens into a list of n-token sequences called “shingles.”
From New York Times ● Jan. 5, 1458
He heard horses’ hoofs plodding on the road and far-off pounding on wood where a neighbor was shingling a barn.
From "East of Eden" by John Steinbeck
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.
