Gable

How to spell gable

5 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce gable

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does gable mean?

1. nounThe triangular upper section of a wall formed by the two slopes of a ridged roof.

Gable in a sentence

• The surveyor noted a crack running down the brick gable at the side of the house.

• A small round window was set high in the gable above the front door.

Where does gable come from?

Language of origin: Old Norse

Gable arrived in Middle English in the 1300s through Old French gable, which itself had been borrowed from the Old Norse word gafl, meaning the end wall of a building or the fork-shaped support beneath a peaked roof. The Norse term belonged to a wider Germanic family that also gave German its Giebel and Dutch its gevel, all referring to the triangular section of wall closing off the end of a roof. The deeper root is thought to relate to ideas of a fork or a pointed top, which fits the sharp triangular shape a gable forms. Because the word came into English from a Scandinavian source filtered through French, it kept a simple spelling, and the only real trap is that the soft-sounding ending is written -le rather than -el. The same shape survives today in the familiar phrase 'gable end', describing the wall that rises to the roof's peak.

How the word is built

• gable (a single root from Old Norse gafl, meaning the end wall under a ridged roof); no separable prefix or suffix