tile
Definitions
General English
- noun a flat piece of baked clay used as a covering for floors, walls or roofs
- noun a similar piece of another kind of material used to cover floors or walls
- verb to cover the surface of a roof, a floor or a wall with tiles
General Science
- verb to arrange a group of windows in a graphical user interface so that they are displayed side by side without overlapping
Construction
- A thin rectangular unit used as a finish for walls, floors or roofs, such as ceramic tile, structural clay tile, asphalt tile, cork tile, resilient tile, and roofing tile.
Real Estate
- noun a thin flat or curved piece of baked, sometimes glazed, clay or synthetic material used to cover roofs, floors and walls, or for decoration
- noun a short pipe of baked clay, concrete or plastic used in making a drain
- noun a hollow block of baked clay, concrete or gypsum used as a building material for walls or floors
- noun tiles considered collectively
Origin & History of “tile”
A tile is etymologically a ‘cover’. The word comes ultimately from Latin tēgula ‘tile’, a derivative of the same Indo-European base as produced English deck and thatch and Latin tegere ‘cover’ (source of English detect, protect, etc). Tēgula was borrowed into prehistoric west Germanic as *tegala, which evolved into German ziegel, Dutch tegel, and English tile.
