Wooden siding for buildings, consisting of long, thin boards with one edge thicker than the other, installed horizontally and overlapping.
From Middle Dutch 'klaphout,' literally meaning 'split wood' ('klappen' = to split, 'hout' = wood). Dutch shipbuilders used this technique to create overlapping wooden planks for ship hulls, and Dutch colonists brought the method to America for house construction. The word has nothing to do with 'clapping' — that's a folk etymology. It's all about the splitting technique used to create the tapered boards.
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