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Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
tarpaulin
noun
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ A second-hand railway tarpaulin is stronger but more expensive.
▪ He had spread a tarpaulin over the duckboards, and on top of it they dumped blankets from the ambulance.
▪ He kept a Land-Rover, its distributor removed, parked under a tarpaulin in the brush behind the house.
▪ It is understood to have started when tarpaulin sheeting blew on to heaters drying a new resin coating on repair work.
▪ Players flee for cover and tarpaulin goes back out.
▪ Spattered tarpaulins and paint cans were stacked in a corner.
▪ The Arvin sentries in front of the politicians' houses ducked into their tarpaulin shelters.
▪ Yanto could see something behind the boxes, covered by a tarpaulin.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Tarpaulin

Tarpaulin \Tar*pau"lin\, n. [Tar + palling a covering, pall to cover. See Pall a covering.]

  1. A piece of canvas covered with tar or a waterproof composition, used for covering the hatches of a ship, hammocks, boats, etc.

  2. A hat made of, or covered with, painted or tarred cloth, worn by sailors and others.

  3. Hence, a sailor; a seaman; a tar.

    To a landsman, these tarpaulins, as they were called, seemed a strange and half-savage race.
    --Macaulay.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
tarpaulin

c.1600, evidently a hybrid from tar (n.1) + palling, from pall "heavy cloth covering" (see pall (n.)); probably so called because the canvas sometimes is coated in tar to make it waterproof. Originally tarpawlin, tarpawling, etc., the spelling settled down early 18c.

Wiktionary
tarpaulin

n. 1 (context countable English) A heavy, waterproof sheet of material, often cloth, used as a cover. 2 (context countable slang archaic English) A sailor. Often abbreviated to just tar. 3 (context uncountable obsolete English) Any heavy, waterproof material used as a cover. 4 (context uncountable nautical obsolete English) canvas waterproofed with tar, used as a cover. 5 A hat made of, or covered with, painted or tarred cloth, worn by sailors and others.

WordNet
tarpaulin

n. waterproofed canvas [syn: tarp]

Wikipedia
Tarpaulin

A tarpaulin (US: , UK: ), or tarp, is a large sheet of strong, flexible, water-resistant or waterproof material, often cloth such as canvas or polyester coated with urethane, or made of plastics such as polyethylene. In some places such as Australia, and in military slang, a tarp may be known as a hootch. Tarpaulins often have reinforced grommets at the corners and along the sides to form attachment points for rope, allowing them to be tied down or suspended.

Inexpensive modern tarpaulins are made from woven polyethylene; this material is so associated with tarpaulins that it has become colloquially known in some quarters as polytarp.

Usage examples of "tarpaulin".

A score of yachts lies moored to a wooden jetty, and one or two owners have been stirred by the sunlight of a spring anticyclone, into taking the tarpaulins off cabin roofs and putting the cushions out to air.

Ozhobar covered the ballista with a tarpaulin and led Karis back to the warmth of the forge.

All that day there was a deal of mysterious coming and going aboard the brigantine, and in the afternoon a sailboat went up to the town, carrying the captain, and a great load covered over with a tarpaulin in the stern.

Draping a tarpaulin over Silvester, Maccoby and Geneva guided the tree-man out to the waiting truck.

Then it dawned on him that the thing on the other side of the hedge was only a robed assemblage of ribs and femurs and vertebrae if viewed from one point of view but, if looked at slightly differently, was equally just a complexity of sparging arms and reciprocating levers that had been covered by a tarpaulin which was now blowing off.

Close to Spital Square I found a quiet corner where I quickly dismounted the guys, covered them with the tarpaulin and, urged by a new anxiety from the rapidly-growing density of the fog, groped my way into Norton Folgate.

In it was a pile of equipment, including oxygen cylinders, a thermic lance holder, bundles of lances, some tubular scaffolding, a block and tackle, a tarpaulin, a couple of steel-wire nets and a steel T-bar with folding arms.

Another signal and they started unloading the equipment -he and Jock the oxygen cylinder, thermic lances and other gear, including the guns, Eddie and Joseph the tarpaulin, tubular scaffolding, and the block and tackle.

He had always prided himself on maintaining the volto sciolto, pensieri stretti rather better than most men, and here were illiterate tarpaulins comforting him for a distress that he could have sworn was perfectly undetectable.

Buckhorn, in the bobsleigh, all wrapped up in old buffalo-robes and blankets and tarpaulins.

Across the way, Drunk Town was just smoking rubble and twisted remains, a few isolated fires still smoldering, temporary lean-tos, tarpaulin or canvas shelters.

When the boats were stripped of their tarpaulins, and a few lockers and store-rooms examined, the only available hiding-places were the shaft tunnel, the holds, and the lazarette, a small space between decks, situated directly above the propeller, where a reserve supply of provisions is generally carried.

Two days afterward a negro oysterman came up from Indian River with news that the pirates were lying off the inlet, bringing ashore bales of goods from their larger vessel and piling the same upon the beach under tarpaulins.

He personally strung a cable over the grating close above the boilers, tightened it with a turnbuckle, and hung a tarpaulin over it to form a sort of tent.

The position was carried with a rush, and many of the Boers bayoneted before they could disengage themselves from the tarpaulins which covered them.