Word.ws English Dictionary

spolia

spolia noun: old objects, artifacts, and/or sculptural elements reused in a later work of architecture.

Noun

spolia pl (plural only)

  1. (plural, plural-only) Old objects, artifacts, and/or sculptural elements reused in a later work of architecture.
    • In the field of architecture the use of spolia began with Constantine.2010, Anthony Grafton, Glenn W. Most, Salvatore Settis, The Classical Tradition, page 904
    • The sultan did not so much destroy and rebuild as adapt and embroider, reusing the gorgeous spolia of the Crusaders with their foliate patterns, capitals and wetleaf acanthus; his architecture is thus constructed with the very symbols of his enemies, which makes it hard to distinguish between the...2011, Simon Sebag Montefiore, Jerusalem: The Biography – A History of the Middle East, page 305

Origin of spolia

Latin spolia (“spoils”).

Questions about spolia

What does spolia mean?
Spolia means old objects, artifacts, and/or sculptural elements reused in a later work of architecture.
What part of speech is spolia?
Spolia is a noun.

Words near spolia in the dictionary

  1. spokon
  2. Spoks
  3. spoky
  4. spole
  5. spoles
  6. spolia
  7. spolia opima
  8. spoliaria
  9. spoliaries
  10. spoliarium
  11. spoliary

Source and license

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