tarpaper

[tahr-pey-per]

noun

1. a heavy, tar-coated paper used as a waterproofing material in building construction.

Word History and Origins

Origin of tarpaper¹

An Americanism dating back to 1890–95; tar ¹ + paper

Example Sentences

“We just put down tarpaper,” son Bryan recalls, “and dropped the flat floor right onto the sloping cement.”

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Authorities in April 1996 found him in a small plywood and tarpaper cabin outside Lincoln, Montana, that was filled with journals, a coded diary, explosive ingredients and two completed bombs.

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“If you’re just in your studio, you can make stuff out of spiderwebs and tarpaper and hot glue if you want to,” says sculptor Cris Bruch, who creates work for galleries and public projects — including Sound Transit, a three-county transportation agency that devotes 1% of its construction costs, minus the expense of tunneling, to public art.

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“Workers would drown all the time. They’d fall into tanks because they only had tarpaper roofs.”

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Most camped across the Potomac River from the Capitol on Anacostia Flats where, as John Dos Passos wrote, "the men are sleeping in little lean-tos built out of old newspapers, cardboard boxes, packing crates, bits of tin or tarpaper roofing, every kind of cockeyed makeshift shelter from the rain scraped together out of the city dump."

Read more on Salon