Dictionaries › English

tarpaulin

Pronunciation: /tɑˈpɔː.lɪn/

The English word “tarpaulin” has 5 meanings listed here.

noun

  1. A heavy, waterproof sheet of material, often cloth or plastic sheet, used as a cover or blanket (often as weatherproofing, or to keep loose cargo from blowing off a lorry).
  2. Canvas waterproofed with tar, used as a cover.
  3. A hat made of, or covered with, painted or tarred cloth, worn by sailors and others.
  4. A sailor.

verb

  1. To cover with a tarpaulin.

Etymology

From tar + pall (“heavy canvas”) + -ing. The sailor sense reflects that sailors of centuries past often wore garments made of tarred cloth (for weatherproofing).

Keep exploring: in the interactive dictionary every word of a definition is a link. Open “tarpaulin” there

More English words

About this dictionary

The English dictionary on Glottosphere has 650,529 entries with a page. Browse the English dictionary.

Definitions are from Wiktionary, extracted by Kaikki.org, and are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.