raftering

English

Noun

raftering (countable and uncountable, plural rafterings)

1. (UK) The practice by which land is raftered (turning the grass side of each furrow upon an unploughed ridge).
   • 1849, John Marius Wilson, The Rural Cyclopedia:

     It is nearly the same thing on stubble land as raftering is on grass land.

   • 1891, Walter James Malden, Tillage, page 47:

     It is open to doubt whether there is any great advantage, but as it is customary in the districts where raftering is practised to use a primitive scuffler called a Brewer's drag, which is made without any means of adjusting the separate tines, ...

   • 1908, Charles Edward Green, D. Young, Encyclopædia of Agriculture:

     Raftering is another excellent process.

2. The set of rafters (sloped beams) of a building or similar construction.
   • 1883, The Building News and Engineering Journal - Volume 45, page 445:

     A simple and very primitive mode of connecting rough rafterings, where all the strength seems to be depending on a pin, is given by Fig. 9.

   • 1902, Edith Wharton, The Valley of Decision, →ISBN:

     […] here the white plunge of water down a wall of granite, and there, in bluer depths, a charcoal burner's hut sending up its spiral of smoke to the dark raftering of branches.

   • 1989, The New Yorker - Volume 64, Issues 46-52, page 70:

     Not quite diaphanous, not Spanish, not a moss, weft after weft depends from chambered rafterings of live oak, […]

Verb

raftering

1. present participle and gerund of rafter

Anagrams

• ingrafter