Word.ws English Dictionary

portego

portego noun: a characteristic compositional element of the Venetian civil buildings built during the years of the Republic of Venice, similar to a reception hall but having peculiar features.

portego: a characteristic compositional element of the Venetian civil buildings built during the years of...
Image: gnuckx, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

portego (plural portegos)

  1. A characteristic compositional element of the Venetian civil buildings built during the years of the Republic of Venice, similar to a reception hall but having peculiar features.
    • The arrangement of the middle windows is a transferring, as it were, of the mediæval portegos into the artistic conditions of the Renaissance.1895, [Theodor] Gsell-Fels, translated by J. Albert Swallow, Venice (Bruckmann’s Illustrated Guides; 2–5), Munich: A. Bruckmann, […], page 12
    • In the portego of the second floor are the only two canal views by Canaletto on show in public galleries in Venice.1998, Jonathan Buckley, Hilary Robinson, The Rough Guide to Venice, Rough Guides, →ISBN, page 114

Forms of portego

pluralportegos

Origin of portego

From Venetan pòrtego. Doublet of porch, portico, and porticus.

Questions about portego

What does portego mean?
Portego means a characteristic compositional element of the Venetian civil buildings built during the years of the Republic of Venice, similar to a reception hall but having peculiar features.
What part of speech is portego?
Portego is a noun.
What is the plural of portego?
The plural of portego is portegos.

Words near portego in the dictionary

  1. ported
  2. Portee
  3. Portees
  4. portefeuille
  5. portefeuilles
  6. portego
  7. portegos
  8. portegue
  9. portegues
  10. Portela
  11. Portelas

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: portego (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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