roofing

1. 1
   noununcountable

   Material laid over a roof's outer surface, such as shingles, tiles, or metal sheets.

   The contractor recommended asphalt roofing for its low cost and durability.

   Hail had punctured the roofing in dozens of places across the warehouse.

   Note

   Here the -ing marks stuff rather than action: the word is roof plus an -ing meaning "material, collection." As a mass noun it is often measured by area. Audrey Garric, writing in The Guardian Weekly in 2013, counts a million square meters of plant-covered roofing built in France in a single year. The plural roofings names different kinds of material, and the same spelling also covers the work of building roofs.

2. 2
   noununcountable

   The work or process of building a roof or roofs.

   The company handles everything from framing to roofing on new homes.

   Roofing in winter is slow and risky because of ice on the surfaces.

3. 3
   verb

   Present participle of roof.

   While roofing the cottage, the workers discovered rotten beams underneath.

   The contractor is roofing two buildings at once this month.

   Note

   The verb form serves both the progressive (they are roofing the shed) and the gerund. Its transitive uses take an object: you roof a cottage, or, in slang, you roof a person, meaning you put them in prison. Another use means crossing buildings by their rooftops, which matches the rooftop-travel noun. The covering sense sits close to the work of building roofs, so the gerund and that noun often read alike.

4. 4
   noununcountable

   A form of travel that involves climbing and clambering over the roofs of skyscrapers.

   Like parkour taken to the skyline, treating a row of rooftops as a path.

   Roofing drew him to the tallest towers in the city after dark.

   City officials cracked down on roofing after a teenager fell from a tower.

   Similarrooftopping

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