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opus spicatum

opus spicatum noun: herringbone masonry.

opus spicatum: herringbone masonry
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Noun

opus spicatum (uncountable)

  1. (Ancient-Rome) Herringbone masonry.
    • One sees in it a pediment in the Empire style on a Jesuit portico; it has rusticated galleries, colonnades like those of the Louvre, Renaissance staircases, Gothic halls, and a Roman crypt. If one were to expose the foundations, one would come upon opus spicatum and Roman cement.1910, M. P. Willcocks, transl., chapter VI, in Frederic Chapman, editor, The Wicker Work Woman: A Chronicle of Our Own Times, translation of Le Mannequin d'osier by Anatole France
    Synonyms:
    spicatum

Synonyms of opus spicatum

Origin of opus spicatum

Borrowed from Latin opus spīcātum (literally “spiked work”), from the resemblance to the interlocking patterns of grain spikes.

Questions about opus spicatum

What does opus spicatum mean?
Opus spicatum means herringbone masonry.
What part of speech is opus spicatum?
Opus spicatum is a noun.

Words near opus spicatum in the dictionary

  1. opus operantis
  2. opus operatum
  3. opus quadratum
  4. opus reticulatum
  5. opus sectile
  6. opus spicatum
  7. opus vermiculatum
  8. opuscle
  9. opuscles
  10. opuscula
  11. opuscular

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: opus spicatum (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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