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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

roof.

The external covering at the top of a building.

4 characters1 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/ɹuːf//ɹʊf//ɹuːf/Received-Pronunciation/ɹʉwf/British, Southern, Standard

  1. The external covering at the top of a building.

    The roof was blown off by the tornado.

  2. The top external level of a building.

    Let's go up to the roof.

  3. The upper part of a cavity.

    The palate is the roof of the mouth.

  4. The surface or bed of rock immediately overlying a bed of coal or a flat vein.

  5. An overhanging rock wall.

  6. A hat.

    archaic · slang
Where this word comes from

From Middle English rhof, rof, roof, rooff, rufe, ruffe, from Old English hrōf (“roof; heaven, sky”), from Proto-West Germanic *hrōf, from Proto-Germanic *hrōfą (“roof”), from Proto-Indo-European *ḱrapo- (“roof”), from *krāwə- (“to cover, heap”). Cognates Cognate with Dutch roef (“cabin on a boat”), Faroese rógv (“roof”); also Czech, Polish, and Slovene strop (“ceiling”), Russian строп (strop, “attic, loft, roof”), Serbo-Croatian стро̏п, strȍp (“ceiling”).

verb/ɹuːf//ɹʊf//ɹuːf/Received-Pronunciation/ɹʉwf/British, Southern, Standard

  1. To cover or furnish with a roof.

    transitive

  2. To traverse buildings by walking or climbing across their roofs.

  3. To put into prison, to bird.

    slang · transitive

  4. To shelter as if under a roof.

    transitive
Where this word comes from

Etymology tree Proto-Germanic *hrōfą Proto-West Germanic *hrōf Old English hrōf Middle English rof Proto-Indo-European *-o- Proto-Indo-European *-nom Proto-Indo-European *-onom Proto-Germanic *-aną Proto-Indo-European *-yeti Proto-Indo-European *-éyeti Proto-Germanic *-janą Old English -an Middle English -en Middle English rofen English roof From Middle English rofen, roven (“to roof”), from the noun (see above).

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.