Word.ws English Dictionary

tessera

tessera noun: a small square piece of stone, wood, ivory or glass used for making a mosaic.

Noun

tessera (plural tesserae)

  1. A small square piece of stone, wood, ivory or glass used for making a mosaic.
    • The map was laid using tesserae, small cube-shaped tiles of limestone, marble, or colored stone.2014, Jerry Brotton, Great Maps, DK, page 35
  2. A complex-ridged surface feature seen on plateau highlands of Venus and perhaps on Triton.
  3. (rare) An ancient Roman die.
    • During the reign of Augustus, Rome imported marble from Egypt and Africa, and games of tali and tessera were played.1971, Gwen White, Antique Toys And Their Background, page 110

tessera meaning in Tamil

tessera in Tamil

கட்டவணி, பலவர்ணப் பாவுகல்

Forms of tessera

pluraltesserae

Origin of tessera

Borrowed from Latin tessera (“a cube, a die with numbers on all six sides”), from Ancient Greek τέσσαρες (téssares, “four”).

Words formed from tessera

Questions about tessera

What does tessera mean?
Tessera means a small square piece of stone, wood, ivory or glass used for making a mosaic.
What is tessera in Tamil?
Tessera in Tamil is கட்டவணி, பலவர்ணப் பாவுகல். See Tessera meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is tessera?
Tessera is a noun.
What is the plural of tessera?
The plural of tessera is tesserae.

Words near tessera in the dictionary

  1. tessellating
  2. tessellation
  3. tessellations
  4. Tessema
  5. Tessemas
  6. tessera
  7. tessera-
  8. tesseract
  9. tesseracted
  10. tesseractic
  11. tesseracts

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: tessera (page history and authors); tessera (Tamil Wiktionary) (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: “tessera.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/tessera. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.