Other forms: shingles
A shingle is one of the flat overlapping pieces covering a roof. Cedar shingles, replace a shingle, a shingle roof.
Shingles are laid overlapping so water runs off each onto the next, and cedar and asphalt are the usual materials. There is a separate word shingle meaning the coarse pebbles on a beach — a shingle beach — which is a British usage and unrelated. And shingles is the illness caused by the chickenpox virus reactivating, which is a third word again. Note that hanging out your shingle is American for opening a professional practice.
1nounshingleOne of the flat overlapping pieces covering a roof.
“A storm blew several shingles off the roof of the cabin.”
2nouncoarseThe coarse pebbles on a beach.
“The waves rolled the shingle up and down the beach with a loud rattle.”
shingle is a roof piece or beach pebbles.
Latin scindula meant a roof tile, from scindere, to split — shingles were split from a log. The beach pebbles and the illness are separate words that happened to collide in spelling.
Proto-Indo-European
*sek-
Latin
scindula
Proto-West Germanic
*skindulā
Old English
sċindel
Middle English
shyngel
English, today
shingle
Built from
From Middle English shyngel, alteration of Old English sċindel, from Proto-West Germanic skindulā, borrowed from Latin scindula, from Latin scandula, from Proto-Indo-European sked- (“to split, scatter”), from sek- (“to cut”). a doublet of shindle.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in Nature & Weather, Tools & DIY