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SLAB
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
Irregular inflected forms: slabbed , slabbing
I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Block consisting of a thick piece of something
Classified under:
Nouns denoting man-made objects
Hypernyms ("slab" is a kind of...):
block (a solid piece of something (usually having flat rectangular sides))
Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "slab"):
butcher block; butcher board (a thick wooden slab formed by bonding together thick laminated strips of unpainted hardwood)
tablet (a slab of stone or wood suitable for bearing an inscription)
tile (a flat thin rectangular slab (as of fired clay or rubber or linoleum) used to cover surfaces)
Context examples:
The fireplace, where she had expected the ample width and ponderous carving of former times, was contracted to a Rumford, with slabs of plain though handsome marble, and ornaments over it of the prettiest English china.
(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)
Walking along the Strand, afterwards, and observing a hard mottled substance in the window of a ham and beef shop, which resembled marble, but was labelled Mock Turtle, I went in and bought a slab of it, which I have since seen reason to believe would have sufficed for fifteen people.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
The site is known for its cache of delicate marine specimens from the Early Jurassic –- such as lobsters and vampire squids with their ink sacs still intact — preserved in slabs of black shale.
(Fossils may need air to form, National Science Foundation)
Before two years passed, the rash pair were both dead, and laid quietly side by side under one slab. (I have seen their grave; it formed part of the pavement of a huge churchyard surrounding the grim, soot-black old cathedral of an overgrown manufacturing town in —shire.) They left a daughter, which, at its very birth, Charity received in her lap—cold as that of the snow-drift I almost stuck fast in to-night.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
RNA extracted from a sample was denatured and separated by slab gel electrophoresis, then blotted on to a nitrocellulose or nylon sheet and hybridized with labeled DNA or RNA that is complementary to the desired RNA, whose presence is subsequently indicated by autoradiography or other visualization techniques.
(Northern Blotting, NCI Thesaurus)
“Sold out of geese, I see,” continued Holmes, pointing at the bare slabs of marble.
(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
It was indeed a tall and buxom country lass, with a basket of spinach-leaves upon her head, and a great slab of bacon tucked under one arm.
(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
A council was now held by the whole tribe squatting in a circle, whilst we sat near on a slab of basalt and watched their proceedings.
(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
As she told me she tapped playfully with the heel of her boot on the stone slab and said:—"My poor little feet didn't make much noise then! I daresay poor old Mr. Swales would have told me that it was because I didn't want to wake up Geordie."
(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)
Be that as it might, I seemed to see that woman’s figure still clutching at her treasure trove and flying wildly up the winding stair, with her ears ringing perhaps with the muffled screams from behind her and with the drumming of frenzied hands against the slab of stone which was choking her faithless lover’s life out.
(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
