Roof
nounThe structure forming the upper covering of a building or vehicle.
How to spell roof
4 letters · 1 syllable
How to pronounce roof
What does roof mean?
- nounThe structure forming the upper covering of a building or vehicle.
- verbTo cover a building or space with a roof.
Roof in a sentence
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noun
Heavy snow collected on the roof overnight.
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verb
The builders plan to roof the extension before the rain returns.
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noun
The storm tore several tiles off the roof.
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verb
They decided to roof the patio so it could be used all year.
Where does roof come from?
Language of origin: Germanic
Roof comes straight from the Old English word hrof, which meant the top covering of a building and also, more broadly, the sky or heavens regarded as the roof of the world. It is a native Germanic word rather than a borrowing, with relatives in Old Frisian and Dutch, where forms close to it described a shelter or covering overhead. Unusually for such words, no clear cousin survives in the other older Germanic languages, so its deeper ancestry is debated. The double o spelling simply reflects the long vowel sound that developed over centuries; the word has stayed remarkably stable in both meaning and form since Anglo-Saxon times. Because it has always meant the covering on top, the everyday phrases about a roof over your head carry the same sense the word had more than a thousand years ago.
How the word is built
- roof (whole word; from Old English hrof, the covering of a building)
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