Definitions

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

  • adjective Viscid.
  • noun A broad, flat, thick piece, as of stone or cheese.
  • noun An outside piece cut from a log when squaring it for lumber.
  • noun Baseball The pitcher's rubber.
  • transitive verb To make or shape into slabs or a slab.
  • transitive verb To cover or pave with slabs.
  • transitive verb To dress (a log) by cutting slabs.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To cut slabs or outside pieces from, as from a log, in order to square it for use, or that it may be sawn into boards with square edges.
  • To keep (the sides of any excavation, as a mining-shaft or a well) from crumbling and falling by facing (them) with slabs, either of timber or of stone.
  • noun Moist earth; slime; puddle; mud.
  • Thick; viscous; pasty.
  • noun The wryneck.
  • noun In Australia, a piece of timber, two or three inches thick, ax hewn, not sawed: used for the walls of rough houses. Also used attributively.
  • noun A flat mass of metallic tin cast in a chilling mold of stone or metal.
  • noun plural A commercial name of crude rubber in pieces an inch or two thick formed by pressing several sheets together. See rubber, 3.
  • noun A thick piece of timber; especially, the outer cut of a tree or log when sawed up into planks or boards.
  • noun A thick plate of stone, slate, metal, etc.
  • noun In general, a piece of anything solid and compact, heavy, and thin in proportion to its length and breadth, but thick enough not to be pliable, especially when of considerable size.
  • noun Specifically A flat stone, or plate of iron or glass, on which printing-ink is sometimes distributed for use on a hand-press.
  • noun A thick web or bat of fiber.

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

  • noun obsolete That which is slimy or viscous; moist earth; mud; also, a puddle.
  • noun A thin piece of anything, especially of marble or other stone, having plane surfaces.
  • noun An outside piece taken from a log or timber in sawing it into boards, planks, etc.
  • noun (Zoöl.), Prov. Eng. The wryneck.
  • noun (Naut.) The slack part of a sail.
  • noun (Naut.) a line or small rope by which seamen haul up the foot of the mainsail or foresail.
  • adjective obsolete Thick; viscous.

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

  • noun archaic Mud, sludge.
  • noun A large, flat piece of solid material; a solid object that is large and flat.
  • noun A paving stone; a flagstone.
  • noun Australia A carton containing twenty-four cans of beer.
  • noun slang A large, luxury pre-1980 General Motors vehicle, particularly a Buick, Oldsmobile or Cadillac.
  • noun surfing A very large wave.
  • noun computing A sequence of 12 adjacent bits, serving as a byte in some computers.
  • verb transitive To make something into a slab.
  • initialism Slow, Loud And Bangin': (US) A car that has been modified with equipment such as loudspeakers, lights, special paint, hydraulics, and any other accessories that add to the style of the vehicle.

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

  • noun block consisting of a thick piece of something

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Probably of Scandinavian origin; akin to Danish slab, mud.]

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English sclabbe, slabbe, of unknown origin.

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Examples

  • The slab is a horizontal boundary-line and all the vertical relations are related to it.

    EggO House by A69 Architects 2009

  • A layer of 4″ aggregate, sand, or soil gas collection mats must be installed under the basement slab, and 6 mil polyethelene laid over the aggregate before the basement slab is poured.

    Reuben's Home Inspection Blog - Part 2 2009

  • For the grape-leaf sprigging, I used some leaves from my garden (dating from before the leafhopper and skeletonizer incidents) Â I rolled out a thin slab of clay and then laid leaves on top, then rolled on top of the leaves to embed the veins into the clay.

    Kater’s Art » Blog Archive » Crow and Grape Leaf Cookie Jar 2008

  • The one on the slab is insanely reachy, and involves a hand-foot match with no other holds in sight -- you just have to smear up to it and then do it.

    you got a plot to write every night. did they never tell you that? johnjosephadams 2008

  • For the grape-leaf sprigging, I used some leaves from my garden (dating from before the leafhopper and skeletonizer incidents) Â I rolled out a thin slab of clay and then laid leaves on top, then rolled on top of the leaves to embed the veins into the clay.

    Kater’s Art » 2008 » November 2008

  • I used the cheese to stuff halapeno peppers which I wraped in slab bacon the broiled.

    Queso 2005

  • The important thing in dealing with copper pipes in the slab is to be sure the copper does not touch the rebar -- this can be deadly to the pipes.

    traps for sewer gas 2004

  • The ground floor slab is not nearly as costly as the second floor slab because it has no rebar or plastic blocks.

    If you have questrions about my project... 2002

  • The cost of the first floor slab is buried in the cost of other phases because we poured that slab ourselves in pieces as we had time.

    If you have questrions about my project... 2002

  • At Aberdour Castle, Fifeshire, a vertical dial in a circle engraved on a square slab is set in a kind of niche cutting across the corner of the building and facing south-west.

    The Book of Sun-Dials 1900

Comments

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  • seen slabs used to refer to those flat rectangular smart phones in general.

    May 20, 2013