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• Marco Polo
  Marco Polo

  noun

  Polo, Marco.
• Polo, Marco
  Polo, Marco

  An Italian explorer of the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries; one of the first Europeans to travel across Asia. He visited the court of Kublai Khan (see “Kubla Khan” under “Literature in English”), the Mongol ruler of China, and became a government official in China. His account of his travels was distributed after his return to Italy.

Marco Polo

American  

[mahr-koh poh-loh] / ˈmɑr koʊ ˈpoʊ loʊ /

noun

1. Polo, Marco.

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Marco Polo British  

/ ˈmɑːkəʊ ˈpəʊləʊ /

noun

1. See Polo

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Polo, Marco Cultural  

1. An Italian explorer of the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries; one of the first Europeans to travel across Asia. He visited the court of Kublai Khan (see “Kubla Khan” under “Literature in English”), the Mongol ruler of China, and became a government official in China. His account of his travels was distributed after his return to Italy.

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Example Sentences

Zheng He, a 15th-century Chinese seafarer, visited the strait, and Marco Polo wrote about risk-taking mariners there.

From The Wall Street Journal • Mar. 21, 2026

The nonprofit Ziegler founded, Marco Polo, published thousands of Biden’s emails, intimate photos, text messages and other documents purportedly from Biden’s iPhone backup and cloud storage, according to the lawsuit.

From Los Angeles Times • Mar. 6, 2025

Between 2013 and 2021, with at least five co-conspirators, Schubarth imported “parts of” Kyrgyzstan’s large, endangered Marco Polo argali sheep to the U.S., which he then sent to labs to create 165 cloned embryos.

From Slate • Mar. 16, 2024

In January 2013, a Montana livestock worker returned to the United States from Kyrgyzstan hiding tissue from a Marco Polo argali sheep, one of the largest in the world, federal prosecutors said.

From New York Times • Mar. 14, 2024

We stood on our hands and stuck our legs out of the water, did underwater twists, and played Marco Polo and chicken with the other kids.

From "The Glass Castle" by Jeannette Walls