Word.ws English Dictionary

ostracon

Syllables: os·tra·con/ˈɒstɹəˌkɒn/US/ˈɑstɹəˌkɑn/

ostracon noun: a piece of pottery or stone, usually broken off from a vase or other earthenware vessel, especially one used to cast a vote during the Ancient Greek process of ostracism.

ostracon: a piece of pottery or stone, usually broken off from a vase or other earthenware vessel, especially...
Image: Marsyas, CC BY-SA 2.5, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

ostracon (plural ostraca)

  1. A piece of pottery or stone, usually broken off from a vase or other earthenware vessel, especially one used to cast a vote during the Ancient Greek process of ostracism.
    • The process in this condemnation was thus : the people being assembled, every man took a tile called ostrakon and carried it to a certain part of the market place, surrounded by wooden rails for that purpose, in which were ten gates for the ten tribes to enter distinctly : in this place the tiles...1804, William Fordyce Mavor, chapter I, in Universal History, Ancient and Modern, volume III, New York: Stansbury, page 5
    • Also on view are ostraca, pottery fragments on which Athenians inscribed the names of persons they felt too powerful for the good of the city and deserving of ostracism, or 10 years’ exile, a procedure formalized by Cleisthenes.1993, John Fleischman, “In Classical Athens, a market trading in the currency of ideas”, in The Classical Outlook, volume 71, number 1, →JSTOR, page 11

Forms of ostracon

pluralostraca
alternative formostrakon

Origin of ostracon

Borrowed from Ancient Greek ὄστρακον (óstrakon).

Questions about ostracon

What does ostracon mean?
Ostracon means a piece of pottery or stone, usually broken off from a vase or other earthenware vessel, especially one used to cast a vote during the Ancient Greek process of ostracism.
What part of speech is ostracon?
Ostracon is a noun.
How do you pronounce ostracon?
Ostracon is pronounced /ˈɒstɹəˌkɒn/ (UK).
What is the plural of ostracon?
The plural of ostracon is ostraca.

Words near ostracon in the dictionary

  1. ostracodologists
  2. ostracodology
  3. ostracods
  4. ostracoid
  5. ostracoids
  6. ostracon
  7. ostraconophobia
  8. ostraculture
  9. ostracum
  10. ostraka
  11. ostrakon

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: ostracon (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Eleanorrrrrrrrrr-Ostracon.wav.

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