raftering

English

Verb

raftering

1. present participle and gerund of rafter

Noun

raftering (countable and uncountable, plural rafterings)

1. (UK) The practice by which land is raftered (turning the grass side of each furrow upon an unploughed ridge).
   • 1849, John Marius Wilson, The Rural Cyclopedia:

     It is nearly the same thing on stubble land as raftering is on grass land.

   • 1891, Walter James Malden, Tillage, page 47:

     It is open to doubt whether there is any great advantage, but as it is customary in the districts where raftering is practised to use a primitive scuffler called a Brewer's drag, which is made without any means of adjusting the separate tines, ...

   • 1908, Charles Edward Green, D. Young, Encyclopædia of Agriculture:

     Raftering is another excellent process.

2. The set of rafters (sloped beams) of a building or similar construction.
   • 1883, The Building News and Engineering Journal - Volume 45, page 445:

     A simple and very primitive mode of connecting rough rafterings, where all the strength seems to be depending on a pin, is given by Fig. 9.

   • 1902, Edith Wharton, The Valley of Decision, →ISBN:

     […] here the white plunge of water down a wall of granite, and there, in bluer depths, a charcoal burner's hut sending up its spiral of smoke to the dark raftering of branches.

   • 1989, The New Yorker - Volume 64, Issues 46-52, page 70:

     Not quite diaphanous, not Spanish, not a moss, weft after weft depends from chambered rafterings of live oak, […]

Anagrams

• ingrafter