porticus

porticus noun: a small room in a church, commonly forming extensions to the north and south sides of it, giving the building a cruciform plan, which may function as a chapel, rudimentary transept or burial place.

Noun

porticus (plural porticuses or porticus)

A small room in a church, commonly forming extensions to the north and south sides of it, giving the building a cruciform plan, which may function as a chapel, rudimentary transept or burial place.
- It remains therefore to speculate on the form of the church: whether we located north and south aisles beyond the nave or whether these are porticuses is not clear. The church could have been fully aisled, or it might have had shorter aisles extending to the east end, or just flanking porticuses.1980, Papers of the British School at Rome, R. Clay and Sons, page 110
- Most early masonry churches were of a simple plan consisting of a nave, and sometimes a chancel, porticuses (in a cellular plan church) or transepts (in an integrated plan church), and a tower. Porticuses (porticūs: sing porticus) were lateral chambers.1982, Lesley Adkins; Roy A[rthur] Adkins, A Thesaurus of British Archaeology, Newton Abbot; London: David & Charles; Totowa, N.J.: Barnes & Noble Books, →ISBN, page 145, column 1
An ancient Roman colonnade, arcade, or portico.
- It lay between the Circus Flaminius and the theatre of Marcellus, occupying the same site as the porticus which was built by Q. Caecilius Metellus, after his triumph over Macedonia, in b. c. 146 [Metellus, No. 5], and enclosing, as the porticus of Metellus had done, the two temples of Jupiter...1872, William Smith, editor, A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, volumes III (Oarses–Zygia), London: John Murray, […], pages 4, 6, and 675
- Mr. Codd agrees that this Roman porticus must have been an arcade, with the columns of which we have the bases attached to the square piers; this was a usual Roman construction, and the two bases at an angle (one of them partly inserted in the other) would belong to this plan, the wide distance...1878, J. H. Parker, “Notes on the Discovery of a Roman Porticus at Lincoln”, in The Archaeological Journal. […], volume XXXV, London: […] [T]he Office of the [Royal Archaeological] Institute, […]...

Examples of porticus in a sentence

Since ModE porch indicates a covered approach to the entrance of a building, and since porticuses were usually only accessible from inside the church, this translation is misleading.2000, Carole P. Biggam, “Grund to Hrof: Aspects of the Old English Semantics of Building and Architecture”, in Julie Coleman, Christian...
Only the nave survives but it is not difficult to imagine the apse at the east end, and the small porticuses to the north and south.2018, Frances Marrow, Anno Domini: The Story of Christianity in the British Isles, Kibworth Beauchamp, Leics: Matador, →ISBN, page 75:
It lay between the Circus Flaminius and the theatre of Marcellus, occupying the same site as the porticus which was built by Q.1872, William Smith, editor, A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, volumes III (Oarses–Zygia), London: John Murray, […]...
The upper end of the crypto-porticus forms its own room looking out to the hippodrome, the vineyards, and the mountains; next to it is a room that enjoys the sun, especially during winter.2014, Noelle K. Zeiner-Carmichael, transl., Roman Letters: An Anthology, Wiley-Blackwell, →ISBN:

Forms of porticus

plural	porticuses
plural	porticus

Origin of porticus

From Latin porticus. Doublet of porch, portego, and portico.

Questions about porticus

What does porticus mean?: Porticus means a small room in a church, commonly forming extensions to the north and south sides of it, giving the building a cruciform plan, which may function as a chapel, rudimentary transept or burial place.
How do you use porticus in a sentence?: Since ModE porch indicates a covered approach to the entrance of a building, and since porticuses were usually only accessible from inside the church, this translation is misleading.
What part of speech is porticus?: Porticus is a noun.
What is the plural of porticus?: The plural of porticus is porticuses.

Words near porticus in the dictionary

Adapted from Wiktionary: porticus (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.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

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