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
Before construction, the museum preserved materials and artifacts from the barn in an effort to keep the history of the old structure alive, like the original cupola, which was placed on the roof.—
Jenna Ebbers,
Kansas City Star,
4 Sep. 2026 Part of that magic is about acoustics, of course; comparing the grass carpet of an open-air Centre Court to the massive echo chamber of a closed-roof Ashe Stadium (which also holds about 10,000 more fans) on a rainy day or night is a fool’s errand.—
Corey Seymour,
Vogue,
4 Sep. 2026
Verb
Professional help needed KCK needs licensed electricians, contractors, roofing professionals and more to help with the city’s rebuild.—
Sofi Zeman,
Kansas City Star,
24 Aug. 2026 In Pittsburgh, where affordability increasingly depends not only on building new homes but also on preserving existing ones, roof repair and building maintenance are part of the larger infrastructure conversation.—
Gabby Sartori,
USA Today,
19 Aug. 2026 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