slab
1 Americannoun
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slabs
plural
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a broad, flat, somewhat thick piece of stone, wood, or other solid material.
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a thick slice of anything.
a slab of bread.
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a semifinished piece of iron or steel so rolled that its breadth is at least twice its thickness.
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a rough outside piece cut from a log, as when sawing one into boards.
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Baseball Slang. rubber.
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Building Trades. a section of concrete pavement or a concrete floor placed directly on the ground or on a base of gravel.
verb (used with object)
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slabs,
present (3rd person singular)
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slabbed,
past participle, past
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slabbing
present participle
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to make into a slab or slabs.
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to cover or lay with slabs.
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to cut the slabs or outside pieces from (a log).
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to put on in slabs; cover thickly.
adjective
noun
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a broad flat thick piece of wood, stone, or other material
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a thick slice of cake, etc
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any of the outside parts of a log that are sawn off while the log is being made into planks
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mountaineering a flat sheet of rock lying at an angle of between 30° and 60° from the horizontal
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a printer's ink table
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(modifier) made or constructed of coarse wooden planks
a slab hut
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informal an operating or mortuary table
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informal a package containing 24 cans of beer
verb
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to cut or make into a slab or slabs
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to cover or lay with slabs
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to saw slabs from (a log)
Other Word Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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slabsimple
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slabssimple
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have slabbedperfect
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has slabbedperfect
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am slabbingprogressive
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are slabbingprogressive
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is slabbingprogressive
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have been slabbingperfect progressive
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has been slabbingperfect progressive
Past
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slabbedsimple
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had slabbedperfect
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was slabbingprogressive
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were slabbingprogressive
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had been slabbingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of slab1
First recorded in 1250–1300; Middle English noun slab(be), sclabbe; further origin unknown
Origin of slab2
First recorded in 1595–1605; apparently from Scandinavian; compare Swedish, Norwegian slabb “mire,” Danish slab “mud,” Icelandic slabba “to wade in mud”
Explanation
A slab is a great big thick piece of something. Your backyard patio, for example, might be made of a huge slab of concrete. A sidewalk is often composed of one cement slab after another — these are sometimes called paving slabs. You could refer to large pieces of stone or wood as slabs too. Even your lunch might be a slab, if it's a thick hunk of cheesy pizza or a huge slab of bread slathered with peanut butter. The origins of the word slab are unknown, though we do know it's been around since the thirteenth century.
Vocabulary lists containing slab
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Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
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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 statue, dedicated in 2008, stood on a concrete slab between lanes of traffic outside the Sacramento Youth Center in the 1900 block of Del Paso Boulevard.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 4, 2026
Northern Oregon experiences relatively little seismic activity compared with western Washington and northern California, leaving researchers with fewer earthquakes to use when studying the buried slab and the way seismic waves move through the region.
From Science Daily ● Aug. 30, 2026
The golden slab loses a few crumbs over the tablecloth when cut and grabbed.
From Salon ● Aug. 11, 2026
Profit in the recent quarter was dented by a $16 million non-cash asset impairment charge related to the company’s decision to relocate its planned second satellite aluminum recycled slab center to Columbus, Miss. from Arizona.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 20, 2026
“You’re not killing all your food, Glenn. You had a nice slab of sour cream apple pie here a while back. Did Aunt Fanny bake it?”
From "The Teacher’s Funeral" by Richard Peck
“We have national builders who are missing projections, losing hundreds of thousands of dollars because they have slabs sitting on the ground and no one to frame.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 16, 2026
My grandmother’s baked spaghetti came in slabs, which was part of its charm.
From Salon ● Sep. 20, 2026
Rather than forming one unbroken sheet, Arctic sea ice is divided into separate slabs known as floes.
From Science Daily ● Sep. 18, 2026
Ferguson travelled to her father's address in a taxi with slabs and claimed she was helping in him with his garden, the West Midlands force added.
From BBC ● Sep. 3, 2026
There was Ratwin’s fresh-caught finch fish, and toast with slabs of melting butter.
From "Impossible Creatures" by Katherine Rundell
Father Ariel’s jaunty voice echoed from where he was standing at the slabbed marble pulpit, as he smiled out at the congregation.
From Salon ● Mar. 31, 2024
For one thing Murray was rake-thin and slouchy, a gangly kid next to the slabbed and ripped power-players of the modern men’s game.
From The Guardian ● Jan. 11, 2019
Great sheets of it are slabbed up in front of government buildings and on the "peace line" that separates the Catholic Falls Road from the Protestant Shankill.
From Time Magazine Archive
At times, you become almost certain that you slabbed this hillside three days ago, crossed this stream yesterday, clambered over this fallen tree at least twice today already.
From "A Walk in the Woods" by Bill Bryson
The sun was sinking fast behind the mountains, turning their slabbed sides and soaring pinnacles to giant shields and spears of fire.
From Dawn by Henry Rider Haggard
The work of it was treated as a burden: the parting, the slabbing sulfur-scented grease to scalp for detangling, the heat pressing into a more manageable texture.
From Salon ● Jan. 31, 2021
But I'd advise you to go to the sawmill for your planks, though I do understand the theory of slabbing.'
From Cedar Creek From the Shanty to the Settlement by Elizabeth Hely Walshe
Such a road can be very easily and cheaply built by bringing in a portable sawmill and slabbing the material on two sides to the desired face.
From Motor Truck Logging Methods Engineering Experiment Station Series, Bulletin No. 12 by Frederick Malcolm Knapp
After the filling material has been thoroughly crutched through the soap it is framed, and, after being several days in the frame to solidify and cool the soap is ready for slabbing, pressing and wrapping.
From Soap-Making Manual A Practical Handbook on the Raw Materials, Their Manipulation, Analysis and Control in the Modern Soap Plant. by E. G. Thomssen
Numbers 3 and 4 are for slabbing or converting round logs into square timber.
From Modern Machine-Shop Practice, Volumes I and II by Joshua Rose
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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.
