tile

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English

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tiles

Pronunciation

Etymology 1

From Middle English tile, tyle, tigel, tiȝel, teȝele, from Old English tieġle, tiġle, tiġele (tile; brick), from Proto-West Germanic *tigulā, from Proto-Germanic *tigulǭ (tile), from Latin tēgula. Doublet of tegula.

Noun

tile (plural tiles)

  1. 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.
    • 1963, Margery Allingham, chapter 3, in The China Governess: A Mystery, London: Chatto & Windus, →OCLC:
      Sepia Delft tiles surrounded the fireplace, their crudely drawn Biblical scenes in faded cyclamen blending with the pinkish pine, while above them, instead of a mantelshelf, there was an archway high enough to form a balcony with slender balusters and a tapestry-hung wall behind.
  2. (computing) A rectangular graphic.
    Each tile within the map consists of 256 × 256 pixels.
    Sprites and tiles that are hidden in the prototype ROM file can be recovered.
  3. Any of various flat cuboid playing pieces used in certain games, such as dominoes, Scrabble, or mahjong.
    • 2005, William T. Vollmann, “They Came Out Like Ants!”, in Dave Eggers, editor, The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2005 (Literature), Houghton Mifflin Company, →ISBN, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 298:
      One hot summer day in the Chinese city of Nan-ning, I wandered through a park of lotus leaves and exotic flowers to a pagoda where ancient women sat, drowsily, happily playing mahjongg amidst the scent of flowers, and that excellent sound of clicking tiles enchanted me; I was far from home, but that long slow summer afternoon with the mah-jongg sounds brought me back to my own continent and specifically to Mexicali, whose summer tranquillity never ends.
  4. (dated, informal) A stiff hat.
    • 1865, Charles Dickens, chapter III, in Doctor Marigold's Prescriptions:
      Tile - Tile, a Hat.
    • 1911, Charles Collins, Fred E. Terry and E.A. Sheppard, "Any Old Iron", British Music Hall song
      Dressed in style, brand-new tile, And your father's old green tie on.
    • 1912, Arthur Conan Doyle, The Lost World , London; New York, N.Y.: Hodder and Stoughton, →OCLC:
      Thus, when old Doctor Meldrum, with his well-known curly-brimmed opera-hat, appeared upon the platform, there was such a universal query of "Where did you get that tile?" that he hurriedly removed it, and concealed it furtively under his chair.
Derived terms
Descendants
Translations

Verb

tile (third-person singular simple present tiles, present participle tiling, simple past and past participle tiled)

  1. (transitive) To cover with tiles.
    The handyman tiled the kitchen.
    White marble tiled the bathroom.
    • 1980, Robert M. Jones, editor, Walls and Ceilings, Time-Life Books, →ISBN, page 38:
      Some professionals begin tiling a wall by setting a full tile in the most visually prominent corner []
  2. (graphical user interface) To arrange in a regular pattern, with adjoining edges (applied to tile-like objects, graphics, windows in a computer interface).
  3. (computing theory) To optimize (a loop in program code) by means of the tiling technique.
  4. (Freemasonry) To seal a lodge against intrusions from unauthorised people.
Derived terms
Translations

Etymology 2

See tiler (doorkeeper at a Masonic lodge).

Alternative forms

Verb

tile (third-person singular simple present tiles, present participle tiling, simple past and past participle tiled)

  1. To protect from the intrusion of the uninitiated.
    to tile a Masonic lodge
    tile the door

See also

Anagrams

Bambara

Noun

tìlé

  1. sun
  2. day, daytime, the heat of the day
  3. epoch, era

Derived terms

Irish

Etymology

(This etymology is missing or incomplete. Please add to it, or discuss it at the Etymology scriptorium.)

Noun

tile m (genitive singular tile, nominative plural tilí)

  1. (nautical, literary) board, plank (of boat)
  2. (nautical)
    1. sheets
    2. poop

Declension

Declension of tile (fourth declension)
bare forms
case singular plural
nominative tile tilí
vocative a thile a thilí
genitive tile tilí
dative tile tilí
forms with the definite article
case singular plural
nominative an tile na tilí
genitive an tile na dtilí
dative leis an tile
don tile
leis na tilí

Derived terms

Mutation

Mutated forms of tile
radical lenition eclipsis
tile thile dtile

Note: Certain mutated forms of some words can never occur in standard Modern Irish.
All possible mutated forms are displayed for convenience.

Further reading

Old English

Pronunciation

Adjective

tile

  1. inflection of til:
    1. strong accusative feminine singular
    2. strong instrumental masculine/neuter singular
    3. strong nominative/accusative masculine/feminine plural
    4. weak nominative feminine/neuter singular
    5. weak accusative neuter singular

Pali

Alternative forms

Noun

tile

  1. locative singular of tila (sesame)

Spanish

Etymology

Borrowed from Pipil tlilli.

Pronunciation

  • IPA(key): /ˈtile/
  • Rhymes: -ile
  • Syllabification: ti‧le

Noun

tile m (plural tiles)

  1. (El Salvador, Honduras) soot
    Synonyms: hollín, negrumo
  2. (poetic, Honduras) darkness
    Synonym: oscuridad

Adjective

tile m or f (masculine and feminine plural tiles)

  1. (colloquial, Honduras) hard, complicated
    Synonyms: dipisil, complicado

Further reading