roof
Pluralroofs
Pluralroofs
- 1The structure that covers the top of a building or vehicle, including its outer surface.
Heavy snow collected on the roof overnight.
The convertible's roof folds down at the touch of a button.
UsageThe plural is roofs; rooves, heard in Britain, is uncommon and often treated as an error. Things sit on the roof; people share a home under one roof.
Note
The literal covering that every other sense borrows from. Old English hrōf could mean a roof or a ceiling, but also a summit and even the sky, so the idea of whatever sits on top is very old.
- 2The upper inside surface of a hollow space such as a cave, tunnel, or mine, including the rock just above a mine seam.
Bats clung to the roof of the limestone cavern.
The dentist examined the roof of the patient's mouth.
UsageUsually the roof of something: the roof of the mouth, the roof of a cave.
Note
Most often heard in an of-phrase: the roof of the mouth, the roof of a cave, and in football commentary the roof of the net, where a shot flies into the top of the goal. The roof of the mouth is the everyday name for the palate. The inner sense is old, because Old English hrōf already meant "ceiling" as well as the outer covering.
- 3To cover or fit a structure with a roof.
The builders roofed the cottage with slate tiles.
Volunteers helped roof the shelter before winter set in.
UsageUsually roof a building with a material (roofed with slate), or roof over an open space.
Similarcover
Note
The verb was made from the noun as early as Middle English rofen. With over, it stresses closing in an open space: James George Frazer's The Golden Bough describes a trench "roofed over with sticks and earth" to form a dark tunnel.
Less common meanings
- 4To provide shelter to someone or something, as if under a roof.
They reached him: the pieces of rock had roofed him over—he was without injury or scratch.
1865, Thomas Greenbury, Pleasant Rambles Over MoorsIt built him softly round, it roofed him warmly over, it rested, all so firm, on selection.
1903, Henry James, The AmbassadorsSimilarshelter, house, harbor, lodge
Note
A literary extension in which the shelter comes from something that is not a roof at all. In Thomas Greenbury's Pleasant Rambles (1865), fallen rock "roofed him over" and left a man unhurt. Henry James's The Ambassadors (1903) has an abstract support roof a man "warmly over". It keeps the over of the builder's verb, applied to rock, ideas or people instead of timber.
Checked 7 Nov 2026 · 3 facts
- Thomas Greenbury's Pleasant Rambles contains the quoted phrase and describes rocks protecting a man who escaped injury. en.wiktionary.org
- Henry James wrote The Ambassadors, first published in 1903. gutenberg.org
- The Ambassadors uses 'roofed him warmly over' figuratively for the support offered to Strether; the words belong to the narration. gutenberg.org
- 5To make one's way across buildings by walking or climbing over their roofs.
- 6A hat.
Note
Old slang treated a hat as the roof over a person's head. In Thomas Hughes's Tom Brown's School Days (1857), Tom is equipped in his "go-to-meeting roof", as his new friend calls it, meaning his best hat.
- 7An overhanging section of rock that extends horizontally or nearly horizontally above a climber.
- 8To put someone in prison.
Showing meanings only.
Practice
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Origins
It goes back to Proto-Germanic "*hrōfą" (roof). Old English "hrōf" meant roof or ceiling, top or summit, and heaven or sky, and it became Middle English "rof."
This comes from Middle English "rofen" or "roven" (to roof), formed from the noun "roof."
Checked 7 Nov 2026 · 2 facts
- The verb roof comes from Middle English rofen or roven, meaning to roof. en.wiktionary.org
- The Middle English verb was formed from the noun roof. en.wiktionary.org