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dado

American  
[day-doh] / ˈdeɪ doʊ /

noun

  • dadoes,
    plural
  • dados
    plural
  1. Also called die. Architecture. the part of a pedestal between the base and the cornice or cap.

  2. the lower broad part of an interior wall finished in wallpaper, a fabric, paint, etc.

  3. Carpentry. a groove or rectangular section for receiving the end of a board.


verb (used with object)

  1. to provide with a dado.

verb phrase

  1. dado in to insert (a board or the like) into a dado.

dado British  
/ ˈdeɪdəʊ /

noun

  1. the lower part of an interior wall that is decorated differently from the upper part

  2. architect the part of a pedestal between the base and the cornice

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

verb

  1. (tr) to provide with a dado

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

Etymology

Origin of dado

1655–65; < Italian: die, cube, pedestal, perhaps < Arabic dad game

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

See Examples For:

Mr MacKellor added: "We weren't expecting to find much, but we did find quite a lot of stone flagged floors, timber dado panelling and working window shutters."

From BBC ● Dec. 29, 2021

Raposo de Mello, ex-presidente da Anvisa, revelou que ficou atônito diante da mudança de orientação de Adams, dado o apoio de longa data do Advogado-Geral à Anvisa.

From New York Times ● Sep. 16, 2017

Instead, there’s the drooling over the castle’s opulence, the visual caress of every chandelier and gold-leaf dado rail.

From The Guardian ● Mar. 19, 2017

Kirstie Allsopp would doubtless get all prissy about the lack of dado rails, but I find it impossible not to warm to a place like that.

From The Guardian ● Oct. 7, 2010

I see new words that sound cool like dado and kerf and tenon and mortise.

From "Mockingbird" by Kathryn Erskine

Dipping into them revives odd memories — lambrequins and dadoes — gilded rolling-pins, dudes, croquet, the high-wheel bicycle, the game of Boston — a departed age.

From Time Magazine Archive

Such high-art decorations as you encounter—purple friezes surmounting yellow dadoes; dragons peeping out of fruit-baskets; idealized tomatoes in full bloom chasing one another all around the bedroom walls.

From The Genial Idiot His Views and Reviews by John Kendrick Bangs

But very few of them have any noticeable quantity behind their dadoes.

From Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 152, May 9, 1917 by Various

All the long dadoes are carved elaborately and of exquisite workmanship, and the fretted ceilings are charming in design and colouring.

From Empires and Emperors of Russia, China, Korea, and Japan Notes and Recollections by Monsignor Count Vay de Vaya and Luskod by P?ter Vay

In these rooms there should be panels above the dadoes, worked in black, and polished, with yellow ochre or vermilion blocks interposed between them.

From The Ten Books on Architecture by Vitruvius Pollio

Inspired by 19th-century Beaux-Arts proportions, the walls have simplified Classical cornices and dados, creating a sense of the grand, domestic proportions that were the original backdrop for many of these canvases decades ago.

From New York Times ● Jan. 5, 2012

The symbols of his cult were familiar to London's streets and salons—peacock feathers, sunflowers, dados, blue china, long hair, velveteen breeches.

From Time Magazine Archive

The walls were embellished with dados of bright coloured tiles and the floors paved with black and white marble.

From Recollections of Calcutta for over Half a Century by Montague Massey

All young ladies now were water colour artists, or busied themselves with colouring panels and dados on their friend’s walls.

From Social Transformations of the Victorian Age A Survey of Court and Country by T. H. S. (Thomas Hay Sweet) Escott

Some of the dados will be of inlaid stone, tiles, and that sort of thing.

From A Mere Chance, Vol. 1 of 3 A Novel by Ada Cambridge

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