mansard roof

mansard roof (plural mansard roofs)

1. A roof having two slopes on each side, the lower one having a steeper pitch than the upper; this increases the volume of the enclosed space.
   • 2006, Peter Godwin, When a Crocodile Eats the Sun: A Memoir of Africa:

     My parents live in Chisipite (in Shona, the local language, it means "spring," after the water source there), an outer suburb of the city, in a rather austere 1950s house, with a Dutch-style mansard roof, in an astonishingly fecund acre of garden.

2. A steeper roof that terminates into a flat roof at its high point.
   • For quotations using this term, see Citations:mansard roof.