A weather-board.
1632. Mr. Oldham had a small house made all of clapboards (i.e. of cloven boards, without timber).—Winthrop, ‘Journal,’ i. 87 (Bartlett).
1641. No man shall sell clabords of five feet in length for more than three shillings per hundred.—‘Records of Salisbury, Mass.’ (N.E.D.)
1705. After she was gone, the other Ship arrived, which they stow’d likewise with this supposed Gold-Dust, designing never to be poor again; filling her up with Cedar and Clap-board.—Beverley, ‘Virginia,’ p. 18 (Lond.).
1767. The lightning fell in a perpendicular direction, ripping the clapboarding and plaistering as it fell.—Boston Evening Post, June 15.
1767. Wanted, at the Halifax Careening-Yard,… 27 Thousand Clapboards.—Id., Dec. —.
1770. The greatest part of the boards and clapboards on the west end are also burnt off.—Id., July 23.
1775. They say that they [the rats] have ate up the sills already, and they must now go upon the clapboards.—Letter from Peter Oliver, at Boston, to Elisha Hutchinson, June 10: ‘Hutchinson’s Diary,’ i. 469 (1883).
1790. Boards, shingles, clapboards, &c., [were] thrown to a considerable distance.—Mass. Spy, Aug. 12.
1799. The boards and clapboards were rent from the post which conducted the lightning.—Id., n.d.
1806. To be sold, 2 thousand of shaved clapboards.—Id., March 19.
1817. No chimney, but large intervals between the “clapboards,” for the escape of the smoke.—M. Birkbeck, ‘Journey in America,’ p. 141 (Phila.).
1818. This cabin is built of round straight logs, about a foot in diameter, lying upon each other, and notched in the corners, forming a room eighteen feet long by sixteen; the intervals between the logs “chunked,” that is, filled in with slips of wood; and “mudded,” that is, daubed with a plaister of mud:—a spacious chimney, built also of logs, stands like a bastion at one end; the roof is well covered with four hundred “clap-boards” of cleft oak, very much like the pales used in England for fencing parks.—M. Birkbeck, ‘Letters from Illinois,’ p. 34 (Phila.).
1823. They [Western labourers] surround a large fire, and lie on leaves under a clap-board tent, or wooden umbrella, wrapped in a blanket, with their clothes on.—W. Faux, ‘Memorable Days in America,’ p. 315 (Lond.).
1848. See CATS AND CLAY.
