Word.ws English Dictionary

ostracum

ostracum noun: a fragment of pottery.

Noun

ostracum (plural ostraca)

  1. A fragment of pottery.
  2. The middle layer of a molluscan shell.

Forms of ostracum

pluralostraca

Origin of ostracum

From New Latin ostracum, from Ancient Greek ὄστρακον (óstrakon, “pottery fragment; shell”).

Words formed from ostracum

Questions about ostracum

What does ostracum mean?
Ostracum means a fragment of pottery.
What part of speech is ostracum?
Ostracum is a noun.
What is the plural of ostracum?
The plural of ostracum is ostraca.

Words near ostracum in the dictionary

  1. ostracoid
  2. ostracoids
  3. ostracon
  4. ostraconophobia
  5. ostraculture
  6. ostracum
  7. ostraka
  8. ostrakon
  9. ostranenie
  10. ostrasize
  11. Ostrava

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: ostracum (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: “ostracum.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/ostracum. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.