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triclinium

triclinium noun: a couch for reclining at mealtimes, extending round three sides of a table, and usually in three parts.

Noun

triclinium (plural tricliniums or triclinia)

  1. (Ancient-Rome) A couch for reclining at mealtimes, extending round three sides of a table, and usually in three parts.
    • Seated on the triclinium in the midst is a middle-aged man, with a high and noble brow; the fine aquiline nose, so patrician, as if their eagle had set his own seal on his warlike race;...1831, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter XXI, in Romance and Reality. […], volume I, London: Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley, […], →OCLC, page 259
  2. (Ancient-Rome) A dining room furnished with such a triple couch.
    • The manor house seemed still as the night itself. Morgan la Blanche had taken herself to a couch in the triclinium, choosing it rather than one of the cubicles leading from the atrium.1903, Warwick Deeping, Uther and Igraine, New York, N.Y.: The Outlook Company
    • OECUS, the Latinized form of Gr. οἶκος, house, used by Vitruvius for the principal hall or saloon in a Roman house, which was used occasionally as a triclinium for banquets.1911, 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica, Oecus

Forms of triclinium

pluraltricliniums
pluraltriclinia

Origin of triclinium

Borrowed from Latin trīclīnium, from Ancient Greek τρικλίνιον (triklínion).

Words formed from triclinium

Questions about triclinium

What does triclinium mean?
Triclinium means a couch for reclining at mealtimes, extending round three sides of a table, and usually in three parts.
What part of speech is triclinium?
Triclinium is a noun.
What is the plural of triclinium?
The plural of triclinium is tricliniums.

Words near triclinium in the dictionary

  1. triclinate
  2. triclinia
  3. triclinial
  4. tricliniary
  5. triclinic
  6. triclinium
  7. tricliniums
  8. triclinohedric
  9. triclocarban
  10. triclofos
  11. triclonide

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: triclinium (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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