rafter

«rafter» in Mova's school dictionary: One of the long sloping beams of wood that hold up a roof — its meaning for a pupil, its sense in the lessons and examples, with 1 sentence of Mova's corpora that use it.

part of speech

noun (a rafter, rafters)

meaning for a pupil

1) One of the long sloping beams of wood that hold up a roof. tree →

2) (phrase) «packed to the rafters» = completely full of people or things. tree →

sense in the lessons

Building and design lessons about roofs. Stories: owls, bats and swallows nest in the rafters of barns; hams hang from the rafters of an old kitchen, as in Badger's house in The Wind in the Willows. «The hall was packed to the rafters» means very full. «The cheers shook the rafters.»

examples

• Swallows built a nest in the rafters of the barn. tree →
• Hams and bunches of herbs hung from the rafters. tree →
• The hall was packed to the rafters for the concert. tree →
• We could see the old wooden rafters in the attic. tree →
• An owl sat on a rafter, watching. tree →
• The builders fixed new rafters on the roof. tree →
• I looked down between the bare rafters and through the open loft into the comfortless space below. tree →

note

Usually plural: rafters. A roof «beam» lies flat or slopes; rafters slope from the ridge to the walls.

In the corpora

• By slothfulness the rafters sink in; and through idleness of the hands the house leaketh.

Trees and pragmatics

Every meaning and example of «rafter» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.