Wiktionary
n. (roof tile English)
Wikipedia
Roof tiles are designed mainly to keep out rain, and are traditionally made from locally available materials such as terracotta or slate. Modern materials such as concrete and plastic are also used and some clay tiles have a waterproof glaze.
Roof tiles are 'hung' from the framework of a roof by fixing them with nails. The tiles are usually hung in parallel rows, with each row overlapping the row below it to exclude rainwater and to cover the nails that hold the row below. There are also roof tiles for special positions, particularly where the planes of the several pitches meet. They include ridge, hip and valley tiles. These can either be bedded and pointed in cement mortar or mechanically fixed.
Similarly to roof tiling, tiling has been used to provide a protective weather envelope to the sides of timber frame buildings. These are hung on laths nailed to wall timbers, with tiles specially molded to cover corners and jambs. Often these tiles are shaped at the exposed end to give a decorative effect. Another form of this is the so-called mathematical tile, which was hung on laths, nailed and then grouted. This form of tiling gives an imitation of brickwork and was developed to give the appearance of brick, but avoided the brick taxes of the 18th century.
Slate roof tiles were traditional in some areas near sources of supply, and gave thin and light tiles when the slate was split into its natural layers. It is no longer a cheap material, however, and is now less common.
Usage examples of "roof tiles".
Overhead, a quarter of the heavy roof tiles hung crooked or tilted.
Slowly, as slowly as Lephi's mouth opened in protest, the brown waves rose and then crashed ponderously over those white walls, submerging first the walls, and then the houses that were already little more than heaps of shattered white stucco and stone and crushed roof tiles.
Cerryl glanced back, and the dark slate roof tiles glittered above the wall almost like shining water in the rays of the summer sun.
His boots skidded as he hit, and he clutched at the still-warm roof tiles, somehow slowing his descent on the sloping roof.
At last, on a side street just as wide as the main, just' beyond a gateless opening in one of the collapsing inner walls, she found the inn she wanted, three stories of rough gray stone topped with purple roof tiles.
The rain beating down on the roof tiles was loud here, just overhead.
Adele felt the vibration more as a queasiness than a sound, but the roof tiles clicked together at a gathering rate.
A finger-high plant grew from a joint in the roof tiles where windblown dirt had given it lodgment.
Noises carried: the insane laughing of hyenas, the screech of an owl, a crashing of pottery or roof tiles upset by some big body leaping.