shingle

from The Century Dictionary.

• noun A kind of water-worn detritus a little coarser than gravel: a term most generally used with reference to debris on the sea-shore, and much more commonly in the British Islands than in the United States.
• noun Girth; hence, the waist; the middle.
• noun A thin piece of wood having parallel sides and being thicker at one end than the other, used like a tile or a slate in covering the sides and roofs of houses; a wooden tile.
• noun A small sign-board, especially that of a professional man: as, to hang out one's shingle.
• To cover with shingles: as, to shingle a roof.
• To cut (the hair) so that streaks of it overlap like rows of shingles; hence, to cut (the hair, or the hair of) very close.
• In puddling iron, to hammer roughly or squeeze (the ball of metal).

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

• noun (Geol.) Round, water-worn, and loose gravel and pebbles, or a collection of roundish stones, such as are common on the seashore and elsewhere.
• transitive verb To subject to the process of shindling, as a mass of iron from the pudding furnace.
• noun A piece of wood sawed or rived thin and small, with one end thinner than the other, -- used in covering buildings, especially roofs, the thick ends of one row overlapping the thin ends of the row below.
• noun Jocose, U. S. A sign for an office or a shop.
• noun (Bot.) a kind of oak (Quercus imbricaria) used in the Western States for making shingles.
• transitive verb To cover with shingles.
• transitive verb To cut, as hair, so that the ends are evenly exposed all over the head, as shingles on a roof.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

• noun A small, thin piece of building material, often with one end thicker than the other, for laying in overlapping rows as a covering for the roof or sides of a building.
• noun A rectangular piece of steel obtained by means of a shingling process involving hammering of puddled steel.
• noun A small signboard designating a professional office; this may be both a physical signboard or a metaphoric term for a small production company (a production shingle).
• verb transitive To cover with small, thin pieces of building material, with shingles.
• noun Small, smooth pebbles, as found on a beach.
• verb transitive, manufacturing To hammer and squeeze material in order to expel cinder and impurities from it, as in metallurgy.
• verb To lash with a shingle.
• noun A punitive strap such as a belt, as used for severe spanking
• noun by extension Any paddle used for corporal punishment

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

• noun building material used as siding or roofing
• noun coarse beach gravel of small waterworn stones and pebbles (or a stretch of shore covered with such gravel)
• noun a small signboard outside the office of a lawyer or doctor, e.g.
• verb cover with shingles