rooflessadj.

OE Charter: Bp. Ealdred to Æðelstan (Sawyer 1406) (transcript of lost MS) in A. J. Robertson Anglo-Saxon Charters (1956) 208 Þæt synd twa hida mid þam þe he ær hæfde & mid þam hrofleasan lande.

1585 J. Higgins tr. Junius Nomenclator 383/1 Rus,..a place without house or building therevpon, where the fields be tilled: the countrie: a roofelesse farme.

1924 Everybody's Feb. 179/1 The uplands of the Nevada-California line above the Colorado River... A wide, roofless country, this latter, and colored like a box of paints.

1930 H. Garland Roadside Meetings 185 There was something confident, joyous, graceful in this roofless land of the horseman, the miner, and the hunter.

1975 D. Healey in D. Marcus Best Irish Short Stories (1976) I. 91 The Leitrim-Cavan border,..a roofless countryside without trees or soldiers or gunfire at night.

OE Antwerp Gloss. (1955) 241 Parietina, roflease uel manlease ealde wealles.

1610 P. Holland tr. W. Camden Brit. i. 402 At Luton I saw a faire church but the Quier then roofelesse.

1663 W. Charleton Chorea Gigantum 25 To be customary among the old Roman Architects, to form the like Porticoes in their Temples, and more particularly in such Temples, as properly belonged to the Aspect Hypæthros, or were Roofless.

1725 A. Ramsay Gentle Shepherd ii. iii. 25 The Wind made Glaud a Roofless Barn.

1793 W. Cowper Tale 38 Within that cavity aloft Their roofless home they fixt.

1835 E. Bulwer-Lytton Rienzi I. i. xiii. 159 He gazed around upon the roofless columns and shattered walls.

1877 D. M. Wallace Russia xxviii. 436 But the great majority of the houses were still roofless.

1924 William & Mary Coll. Q. Hist. Mag. 4 114 The ware and tobacco houses fell into disrepair..becoming roofless and paneless.

1952 T. Armstrong Adam Brunskill vii. 211 In the peaceful atmosphere of a roofless nave she calmed down.

2007 Guardian (Nexis) 15 Dec. 40 I slip inside the roofless ruin of Marconi's 1914 wireless station.

1797 Monthly Rev. 23 571 Wandering hordes, clotheless, roofless, and ferocious.

1838 F. A. Kemble Jrnl. Resid. Georgian Plantation (1863) 1 The Irish peasant is starved, naked, and roofless.

1863 B. Jerrold Signals of Distress 58 These roofless creatures.

1883 Harper's Mag. June 132/1 He has furnished food and shelter to the tired and roofless.

1936 M. R. Anand Coolie iv. 283 You are the roofless..sweepers of dust and dirt.

1961 P. White Riders in Chariot viii. 236 You cannot tell me..that a home is not a home, with so many going roofless.

1987 M. Das Cyclones v. 22 He is roofless and without the means to raise a thatch over his head.

2002 Sunday Mail (Brisbane) 15 Sept. 102/2 (headline) One of the roofless people.

1912 R. W. Service Rhymes of Rolling Stone 110 Your trouble was a roofless game of poker now and then.

1571 Grant 28 Feb. in G. H. Woodward Cal. Somerset Chantry Grants, 1548–1603 (1902) 111 James Meade..roofless tenement in Fore Street containing..pasture and 2 small closes.

1701 in Compl. Conveyancer 328 All that Toft or Roofless Tenement in T aforesaid, with their Appurtenances, containing by estimation eight Acres of Land, Meadow and Pasture.

1847 J. O. Halliwell Dict. Archaic & Provinc. Words II Overland, a roofless tenement. Overlandfarm, a parcel of land without a house to it.

1999 Pract. Family Hist. Oct. 15/2 Tenement: Any land holding, a roofless tenement is one without a building on it.

1827 R. Chambers Picture of Scotl. II. 218 The townhouse..is now in ruins, and, owing at once to its blackness, its rooflessness, and the attrition which the weather has wrought,..has altogether a most haggard and dismal appearance.

1906 Pall Mall Mag. Dec. 792/1 In what way..does the rooflessness of my inner garden vex thee?

2007 D. Brooks Fern Tattoo xv. 246 The solidity of the marble staircases gave way to the sudden apparent rooflessness.