Word.ws English Dictionary

oboli

oboli is the plural of obolus.

Meaning of obolus

Noun

obolus (plural oboli or oboluses)

  1. (Ancient Greece) A silver coin minted in Ancient Greece, valued at a sixth of a drachma.
    • I remember one of these who, having received a pretty large sum of money, gave me, when I begged an obolus, a whole talent; on which his friend having reproved him, he answered, with an oath, ‘Why not? Have I not fifty left?’1749, Henry Fielding, A Journey from This World to the Next
  2. (historical) A unit of weight, equal to one-sixth of a drachma.
    • Dav. […] And after that I met the boy of Chremes
      With fishes, and an obolus of herbs.1870, John Benson Coles Rose, transl., Andria, translation of original by Publius Terentius Afer, Act II, scene 2, page 21

Questions about oboli

What is oboli the plural of?
Oboli is the plural of obolus.

Words near oboli in the dictionary

  1. obol
  2. obolary
  3. obole
  4. Oboler
  5. oboles
  6. oboli
  7. obolid
  8. obolids
  9. obolize
  10. obolized
  11. obolizes

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: oboli (page history and authors); obolus (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: “oboli.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/oboli. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.