Clapboard
Building siding of horizontal boards / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This article is about the construction material. For the device used in filming, see Clapperboard.
Clapboard (/ˈklæbərd/), also called bevel siding, lap siding, and weatherboard, with regional variation in the definition of those terms, is wooden siding of a building in the form of horizontal boards, often overlapping.
![Contemporary use of clapboard/weatherboard](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3e/Facade_detail_with_natural_building_materials%2C_Tasmanian_House_by_Jiri_Lev.jpg/640px-Facade_detail_with_natural_building_materials%2C_Tasmanian_House_by_Jiri_Lev.jpg)
![Thumb image](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a6/Stained_wooden_clapboard_siding.jpg/640px-Stained_wooden_clapboard_siding.jpg)
![Thumb image](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d5/Saltbox_Concord_2_cropped.jpg/640px-Saltbox_Concord_2_cropped.jpg)
Clapboard, in modern American usage, is a word for long, thin boards used to cover walls and (formerly) roofs of buildings.[1] Historically, it has also been called clawboard and cloboard.[2] In the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand, the term weatherboard is always used.[3][4]
An older meaning of "clapboard" is small split pieces of oak imported from Germany for use as barrel staves, and the name is a partial translation (from klappen, "to fit") of Middle Dutch klapholt and related to German Klappholz.[1]