shingle

Etymology 1

From Middle English shyngel, from Old English sċingul, a late variant of sċindel, from Proto-West Germanic *skindulā, borrowed from Late Latin scindula, from Latin scandula, from Proto-Indo-European *sked- (“to split, scatter”), from *sek- (“to cut”). Doublet of shindle.

noun

1. A small, thin piece of building material, often with one end thicker than the other, for laying in overlapping rows as a covering for the roof or sides of a building.
   I reached St. Asaph, a Bishop's See, where there is a very poor Cathedral Church, covered with Shingles or Tiles 1760, John Ray, Select Remains of the Learned John Ray, M.A. and F.R.S., page 123
2. A rectangular piece of steel obtained by means of a shingling process involving hammering of puddled steel.
3. A small signboard designating a professional office; this may be both a physical signboard or a metaphoric term for a small production company (a production shingle).
   He … hung a shingle as a barber. 2016, Colson Whitehead, The Underground Railroad, Fleet (2017), page 311
   When [these attorneys] were born, in the early decades of the 19th century, being a lawyer meant putting out a shingle and representing your neighbors. 2022, Peter S. Canellos, interviewed by Ronald Collins in eGreater than Holmes? The life and legacy of John Marshall Harlan, SCOTUSblog, April 13 2022

verb

1. (transitive) To cover with small, thin pieces of building material, with shingles.
2. (transitive) To cut, as hair, so that the ends are evenly exposed all over the head, like shingles on a roof.
3. (transitive) To increase the storage density of (a hard disk) by writing tracks that partially overlap.

Etymology 2

From dialectal French chingler (“to strap, whip”), from Latin cingula (“girt, belt”), from cingere (“to girt”).

verb

1. (transitive, manufacturing) To hammer and squeeze material in order to expel cinder and impurities from it, as in metallurgy.
2. (transitive) To beat with a shingle.

noun

1. A punitive strap such as a belt.
2. (by extension) Any paddle used for corporal punishment.

Etymology 3

From Middle English shingel, chingel, singel (“gravel, pebbles”), cognate with Norwegian Bokmål singel (“pebble(s)”), Norwegian Nynorsk singel (“pebble(s)”), and North Frisian singel (“gravel”), imitative of the sound of water running over such pebbles.

noun

1. Small, smooth pebbles, as found on a beach.
   And naked shingles of the world. 1867, Matthew Arnold, Dover Beach
   You need to excavate and remove the topsoil, line the subsoil with a geotextile, then lay and compact hardcore. Follow this with a layer of compacted "hoggin" – compacted clay, gravel and sand. This is then sprayed with hot bitumen, and has a layer of pea shingle rolled into it. 24 August 2014, Jeff Howell, “Home improvements: gravel paths and cutting heating bills [print version: Cold comfort in technology, 23 August 2014, p. P5]”, in The Daily Telegraph (Property)
   One can't escape the huge nuclear facility at Sellafield (supplier of much of the line's remaining freight traffic), or miss the wild shingle beaches with exposed and precarious bungalows sandwiched between the railway and the shore at Braystones. November 2 2022, Paul Bigland, “New trains, old trains, and splendid scenery”, in RAIL, number 969, page 57