WordNet
n. a building material consisting of thin strips of wood that provide a foundation for a coat of plaster
Wikipedia
Lath and plaster is a building process used to finish mainly interior walls and ceilings in Canada and the United States until the late 1950s. After the 1950s, drywall began to replace the lath and plaster process in the United States.
In the United Kingdom and its colonies, lath and plaster was often used for interior partition walls and the construction of ceilings, before the introduction of plasterboard in the 1930s. In the U.K., riven or split hardwood laths were often used of random lengths and sizes. Splitting the timber, as opposed to sawing in straight lines, followed the grain of the timber which greatly improved strength and durability. Also, reed mat was used as a lath. The technique derives historically from the earlier, more primitive, wattle and daub.
Usage examples of "lath and plaster".
None of the other guests were in when the lath and plaster went to flying.
The floor was formed by the rafters, with thin lath and plaster between, so that in walking one had to step from beam to beam.
Or an old and unusually curious church, much churchwardened, and beside it a fragment of fifteenth-century domestic architecture amongst the not unpicturesque lath and plaster of an Essex farm, and looking natural enough among the sleepy elms and the meditative hens scratching about in the litter of the farmyard, whose trodden yellow straw comes up to the very jambs of the richly carved Norman doorway of the church.
While over there, beyond lath and plaster, Arlo, Great White Hunter, coming to a rapid boil.
A cheap and nasty paper covers the wall, excepting where pieces have been torn away, and the broken walls are made of lath and plaster, to provide splendid cover for innumerable insects which remain in undisputed possession.
He was aware of the lath and plaster clinging to the bottom of the joists.