tile
Meanings
- A regularly-shaped slab of clay or other material, affixed to cover or decorate a surface, as in a roof-tile, glazed tile, stove tile, carpet tile, etc.
- A rectangular graphic.
- Any of various flat cuboid playing pieces used in certain games, such as dominoes, Scrabble, or mahjong.
- A stiff hat.
- A Lego piece that is 1/3 the height of a brick, and is smooth without studs on top.
- To cover with tiles.
- To arrange in a regular pattern, with adjoining edges (applied to tile-like objects, graphics, windows in a computer interface).
- To optimize (a loop in program code) by means of the tiling technique.
- To seal a lodge against intrusions from unauthorised people.
- To protect from the intrusion of the uninitiated.
Pronunciation
Word forms
Etymology
From Middle English tile, tyle, tigel, tiȝel, teȝele, from Old English tieġle, tiġle, tiġele (“tile, brick”), from Proto-West Germanic *tigulā (“tile, brick”), from Proto-Germanic *tigulǭ (“tile, brick”), from Latin tēgula, from Proto-Indo-European *(s)teg- (“to cover”). Doublet of tegula. Cognates Cognate with Saterland Frisian Tichel (“tile”), Dutch tichel (“brick”), tegel (“tile”), German Ziegel (“brick, roof tile”), Luxembourgish Zill (“brick, tile”), Danish tegl (“brick”), Faroese tigul (“tile”), Icelandic tigl (“brick, tile”), Norwegian Nynorsk tegl (“brick, roof tile”), Swedish tegel (“brick, tile”), Asturian teya (“tile”), Catalan teula (“tile”), French tuile (“tile”), Galician telha, tella (“roof tile”), Italian tegola (“roof tile”), Mirandese teilha (“roof tile”), Portuguese telha (“roof tile”), Spanish teja (“roof tile”), Belarusian цэ́гла (céhla, “brick”), Czech cihla (“brick”), Polish cegła (“brick”), Serbo-Croatian cígla (“brick”), Ukrainian це́гла (céhla, “brick”), Finnish tiili (“brick, tile”).