Word.ws English Dictionary

nielli

nielli is the plural of niello.

Meaning of niello

Noun

niello (countable and uncountable, plural niellos or nielli)

  1. Any of various black metal alloys, made of sulphur with copper, silver or lead, used to create decorative designs on other metals.
    • a young woman named Renata, with a gesturing of her dark curls, beckoned him in with a cigarette-case of Russian silver and niello, which sprang open to reveal a collection of “smokes” […]2006, Thomas Pynchon, Against the Day, Vintage, published 2007, page 283
  2. An impression on paper taken from the engraved or incised surface before the niello alloy has been inlaid.

See all 3 meanings of niello

Questions about nielli

What is nielli the plural of?
Nielli is the plural of niello.

Words near nielli in the dictionary

  1. Nield
  2. Nields
  3. niellated
  4. nielle
  5. nielled
  6. nielli
  7. niellist
  8. niellists
  9. niello
  10. nielloed
  11. nielloing

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: nielli (page history and authors); niello (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “nielli.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/nielli. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.