thatch
Definitions
Agriculture
- noun a covering for a roof made of reeds, straw, grass or other plant material
- verb to cover a roof with reeds, straw, grass or other plant material
Construction
- A roof covering made of straw, red palm leaves, or similar material fastened together to shed water and provide thermal insulation.
Real Estate
- noun a plant material used as roofing on a house, e.g. straw or rushes.
- verb to put a roof of thatch on a building, or work at doing this
Origin & History of “thatch”
To thatch a building is etymologically to ‘cover’ it; the notion of ‘straw’ is a secondary development. The word goes back ultimately to the Indo-European base *tog-, *teg- ‘cover’ (source also of English detect, integument, protect, tile, and toga). Its Germanic descendant was *thak- (source of German dach ‘roof’ and English deck). from this was derived *thakjan, which gave English thatch.
