alligatoring

1. 1
   noununcountable

   Cracking in a coat of paint that breaks it up into a network of roughly six-sided patches that remain intact.

   The surface breaks into scaly plates, much like the skin on an alligator's back.

   Restorers noticed alligatoring across the mural's lower half.

   The cheap finish developed alligatoring within a single year.

   Note

   Painters and restorers name this defect after the reptile's back. The cracks join into a network of roughly six-sided islands, like the plates of an alligator's hide. It is a mass noun, so a surface develops alligatoring or shows alligatoring across a panel, never "an alligatoring." Roofers use the same image for cracked bitumen, while metalworkers borrow the animal's jaws instead.

2. 2
   noununcountable

   Cracking of the surface bitumen on a built-up roof, or of the coating on a sprayed-foam roof, forming a pattern like an alligator's hide.

   The roof's coating splits into rough segments, just as an alligator's hide is divided into plates.

   The roofing contractor flagged alligatoring along the building's bitumen membrane.

   Widespread alligatoring meant the coating needed redoing before winter.

   Note

   Roofing inspectors apply the paint-shop image to two quite different surfaces: the bitumen that tops a built-up roof and the protective coat over sprayed polyurethane foam. In both cases the damage lies in the top layer, and the word is how a contractor's report describes it. Alligatoring is flagged along a membrane, or it is found to be widespread across a roof.

3. 3
   noununcountable

   A rolling defect in which a metal sheet splits in half along a plane parallel to the rolling surface, opening like an alligator's mouth.

   The sheet gapes open at the end like a pair of jaws.

   Metallurgists traced the alligatoring to flaws in the original billet.

   The rolling line produced alligatoring whenever the slab entered too cold.

   Note

   Here the alligator lends its jaws rather than its skin. A rolled sheet splits into two layers through its thickness, and the opened end gapes like a mouth. The word belongs to the rolling mill, not to paints and coatings, so the cause is sought inside the metal itself: in flaws in the billet, or in a slab that entered the rolls too cold.

4. 4
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of alligator.

   The old enamel was alligatoring across the car's hood.

   Inspectors warned that the roof coating was alligatoring badly.

   Note

   The verb behind this form is intransitive. Enamel, paint or a roof coating alligators on its own, so the progressive takes no object: the enamel was alligatoring. As a gerund it shades into the painter's noun, but the difference is real. The noun names the finished pattern of cracks, while the participle describes cracking that is still under way.

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