1North American A long, thin, flat piece of wood with edges horizontally overlapping in series, used to cover the outer walls of buildings.
as modifier‘neat clapboard houses’
‘This courthouse consisted of a two-story woodframe building covered with clapboards, resting on a foundation of stone blocks.’
‘Eventually, we're directed to a clapboard hut on the edge of town where a pair of women in bright turbans stir two large cauldrons with paddles.’
‘Within ten minutes the stagecoach rocked back into motion and sent a cloud of dust and dirt and grit billowing skywards across the yard towards the gray clapboard building.’
‘James pointed to a white clapboard building around the corner.’
‘Could he really have been on his way to join Nathaniel's mother in her clapboard house outside Philadelphia?’
‘Tombstone, an easy day trip from Tucson, does however offer one vision of Arizona's pioneer days: clapboard and adobe buildings, and, of course, re-enacted gunfights.’
‘As a result, the cottages echo the hotel's classical Georgian architecture, but vernacular details such as clapboard siding and wood porches are also evident.’
‘On March 20, 1854, the Republican Party formally came into being in this white clapboard building.’
‘We passed one simple building after another, made of teak or covered with clapboards painted in pastel blue, yellow, peach or mint green.’
‘There are no green-covered trees to shelter us from the icy north blasts, just the weathered clapboard of this rickety house.’
‘Huddled clapboard houses substitute for the raw-plank architecture of the frontier town; an industrial bridge provides background sublimity in the absence of mountains.’
‘The 41-year-old film maker had his own confusing memories of his father's infrequent visits, mostly nocturnal, to his mother's clapboard flat in Philadelphia.’
‘In the clapboard houses radiating out from the youth center in San Jose, multiple families wedge themselves into cramped rooms and small garages.’
‘I step over the yard toys and around the cross-country skis to reach the front door of the clapboard house on the shore of Lake Champlain.’
‘The clapboard house had caved in and surrendered to saplings and vines.’
‘The classical material of American building is wood and the characteristic structure is clapboard, frame surfaces of overlapping strips.’
‘White-painted cedar clapboards cover its gabled forms, which are topped by classic standing-seam metal roofs.’
‘A retired farmwife emerged from her white clapboard house with a hearty midwestern hello.’
‘A lot of the clapboard on the north end of the house should be replaced.’
‘The old districts with their brick sidewalks are full of lovely clapboard houses built by sea captains.’
1.1informal A house with outer walls covered in clapboards.
‘She reminded me of one of those beauties who sometimes emerge from hard country clapboards or trash-strewn double-wides.’
Origin
Early 16th century (denoting a piece of oak used for barrel staves or wainscot): partial translation of Low German klappholt ‘barrel stave’, from klappen ‘to crack’ + holt ‘wood’.
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