gable

• IPA^(key): /ˈɡeɪ.bəl/

• Audio (Southern England)

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• Rhymes: -eɪbəl

The southern English term gable probably came from Old French gable (compare modern French gâble), from Old Norse gafl. The northern form gavel is perhaps also akin to Old Norse gafl, masculine, of the same meaning (confer Swedish gavel, Danish gavl). See gafl for more etymology information.

A house with four gables visible.

More or less decorated central gables, as well as end-gables, are a prominent feature of some architectural styles such as Cape Dutch

gable (plural gables)

1. (architecture) The triangular area at the peak of an external wall adjacent to, and terminating, two sloped roof surfaces (pitches).
   • 1851 November 14, Herman Melville, chapter 2, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, OCLC 57395299, page 10:

     It was a queer sort of place—a gable-ended old house, one side palsied as it were, and leaning over sadly.

   • 2002, Tony Pinchuck and Barbara McCrea, South Africa, →ISBN:

     Although there were important developments in the internal organization of Cape houses during this period, their most obvious element is the gable. End-gables were common in medieval northern European and particularly Dutch buildings, but central gables set into the long side of roofs were more unusual and became the quintessential feature of the Cape Dutch style.

   • 2017 March, Chen, Piera; ‎Dinah Gardner, Lonely Planet Taiwan (Lonely Planet)‎ (Travel), 10th edition, Lonely Planet Publications Pty Ltd, →ISBN, OCLC 988325176, page :

     Qionglin Village in Kinhu with its well-preserved ancestral halls, arches, and old Fujian-style houses with interesting gables is famous for having more shrines than any other village on Kinmen.

   • For more quotations using this term, see Citations:gable.

• pediment
• peaked roof
• pitched roof

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

gable (plural gables)

1. (archaic) A cable.
   • 1577–83, George Chapman, The Works of George Chapman. Poems and minor translations.The Hymns of Homer: A Hymn to Apollo., Chatto and Windus 1875 :

     First, striking sail, their tacklings then they loosed.
     And (with their gables stoop'd) their mast imposed
     Into the mast-room.

• Gebal, bagel, gabel, galbe, gleba

gable

1. inflection of gabeln:
   1. first-person singular present
   2. first/third-person singular subjunctive I
   3. singular imperative