lath

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

• noun A thin strip of wood or metal, usually nailed in rows to framing supports as a substructure for plaster, shingles, slates, or tiles.
• noun A building material, such as a sheet of metal mesh, used for similar purposes.
• noun A quantity of laths; lathing.
• noun Work made with or from lath.
• transitive verb To build, cover, or line with laths.

from The Century Dictionary.

• To cover or line with or as with laths.
• noun In mining, one of the sharpened planks driven in advance of the excavation in sinking shafts in loose ground. See forepale, 2.
• noun A thin narrow strip of wood, used in building to form the groundwork for a roof or for the plastering of walls and ceilings.
• noun The bow-part of a crossbow.
• noun See lathe.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

• transitive verb To cover or line with laths.
• noun A thin, narrow strip of wood, nailed to the rafters, studs, or floor beams of a building, for the purpose of supporting the tiles, plastering, etc. A corrugated metallic strip or plate is sometimes used.
• noun a long, slender brick, used in making the floor on which malt is placed in the drying kiln.
• noun a slender nail for fastening laths.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

• noun A thin, narrow strip, fastened to the rafters, studs, or floor beams of a building, for the purpose of supporting a covering of tiles, plastering, etc.
• verb To cover or line with laths.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

• noun a narrow thin strip of wood used as backing for plaster or to make latticework