Entry: mansard (n.)
In context: "Unit #6, right up against the ravine on the end of the rutted road's east side, is Ennet House Drug and Alcohol Recovery House, three stories of whitewashed New England brick with the brick showing in patches through the whitewash, a mansard roof that sheds green shingles, a scabrous fire escape at each upper window and a back door no resident is allowed to use and a front office around on the south side with huge protruding bay windows that yield a view of ravine-weeds and the unpleasant stretch of Commonwealth Ave."
Definition: A roof which has four sloping and hipped sides, each of which becomes steeper halfway (or part-way) down. Also (Brit.): a two-sided roof each side of which becomes steeper halfway down, freq. between parapet walls or over gable walls at each end. Also fig.
Other: A word I know of, but didn't look up the meaning to, from the song Mansard Roof by Vampire Weekend. And I know of the band because what self-respecting SNOOT wouldn't check out a song called "Oxford Comma."
Here's a picture of one.
SNOOT score: 1
Page: 197
Source: Oxford English Dictionary, Wikipedia
Definitive Jest is a vocabulary-building and SNOOT-approved word-of-the-day blog centered around David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest.
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