Noun
the roof of a car
The roof of the old barn collapsed.
He bit into a hot slice of pizza and burned the roof of his mouth. Verb
fed and roofed the emergency volunteers for a week
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Noun
Plata then dribbles inside against Gusto’s momentum and strikes the ball into the roof of the goal, but Sanchez saves it.—Ahmed Walid, New York Times, 21 June 2025 Satellite images show a hole in the domed roof of the facility caused by a blast.—Jesus Mesa, MSNBC Newsweek, 20 June 2025
Verb
Diane Hendricks of roofing giant ABC Supply grew up as one of nine sisters on a dairy farm in Wisconsin.—Julie Goldenberg, Forbes.com, 3 June 2025 And in his latest ginormous moment, Verhaeghe roofed a perfect shot for his third series-clinching goal.—Michael Russo, New York Times, 29 May 2025 See All Example Sentences for roof
Word History
Etymology
Noun
Middle English, from Old English hrōf; akin to Old Norse hrōf roof of a boathouse and perhaps to Old Church Slavic stropŭ roof
First Known Use
Noun
before the 12th century, in the meaning defined at sense 1a(1)
: the vaulted upper boundary of the mouth supported largely by the palatine bones and limited anteriorly by the dental lamina and posteriorly by the uvula and upper part of the fauces
2
: a covering structure of any of various parts of the body other than the mouth
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