Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. Plasterwork in imitation of ornamental marble, consisting of ground gypsum and glue colored with marble or granite dust.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. In architecture, an Italian process for imitating stone, used for enriching columns and internal walls of buildings. It is an application of stucco consisting essentially of a mixture of plaster with glue. The plaster employed must be as pure and white as possible. Various colors are given to it by a mixture of metallic oxids. To imitate different kinds of marble, the colors are mixed with the paste. Breccias are imitated by introducing fragments of colored stucco; granites and porphyries in the same way, and also by cutting into the stucco and filling the cavities with a paste having the color of the crystals it is desired to imitate. Sometimes the stucco is put upon the wall with a brush, as many as twenty coats being applied. It is then roughly polished, and the cavities and defective places filled up; and this is done over and over, until the surface has attained the desired perfection; a finer polish is then given.
Wiktionary
- n. Plasterwork imitating marble, granite, etc..
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. An imitation of any veined and ornamental stone, as marble, formed by a substratum of finely ground gypsum mixed with glue, the surface of which, while soft, is variegated with splinters of marble, spar, granite, etc., and subsequently colored and polished.
Etymologies
- Italian, diminutive of scaglia, chip, of Germanic origin; see skel-1 in Indo-European roots. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“Richly detailed Rotunda Lobby, including restoration of the "scagliola" faux marble wainscot and recreation of the long-lost mural over the entrance doors”
“For the banisters and balustrades, Garnier gave full vent to his love of rare stone in combination—pink granite, pink marble, onyx, scagliola and superb mosaic designs on the floors.”
“Having discovered a transcendental route between the beautiful and the grotesque, this “Militant Ornamentalist” is self-taught in the ancient method of Italian scagliola.”
“And Mrs. Browning laughed too, as Flush flung himself down on the bedroom floor and slept soundly upon the arms of the Guidi family inlaid in scagliola.”
“For the morning sun fell aslant on the great glass globe with gold fish in it, which stood on a scagliola pillar in front of the ready-spread bachelor breakfast-table, and by the side of this breakfast-table was a group which would have made any room enticing.”
“_Club Room_, which occupies all the ground floor: it will be divided by columns and pilasters of scagliola, and decorated with a paneled ceiling and appropriate ornaments.”
The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction Volume 19, No. 531, January 28, 1832
“It is above thirty feet high, and fifty-seven feet and a half long; and on each side it has wings or recesses, behind insulated columns of scagliola, in imitation of Egyptian granite.”
The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction Volume 19, No. 531, January 28, 1832
“A flight of veined marble steps leads to the vestibule, with a floor of scagliola, and twelve large Ionic columns and sixteen pilasters of _verde antique_.”
The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction Volume 14, No. 389, September 12, 1829
“The interior red scagliola columns of the vestibule are in pairs, with white bases and capitals, the latter combining the lotus-leaf with the volute.”
“The scagliola decorations in the chapel were by an Englishman, Father +Hugford+, who excelled in various branches of natural philosophy, and in the art of imitating marble by that composition called scagliola.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘scagliola’.
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250 Further Spelling Words
Another compilation of spelling words suitable for intermediate to advanced spellers.
venturi, aesir, affenpinscher, rottweiler, amanuensis, balletomane, hansard, sangfroid, yukata, capriccio, cuisse, heriot and 237 more...
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Marbles
From the GNU Webster's 1913:
"n. A massive, compact limestone; a variety of calcite, capable of being polished and used for architectural and ornamental purposes. The color varies from white ...marble, marbles, lost my marbles, Elgin Marbles, Yule marble, Verona red marble, Carrara marble, Pentelican marble, Parian marble, bardiglio, lumachelle, fire-marble and 117 more...
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phrontistery-s
from phrontistery.info
sabaton, sabbatarian, sabbulonarium, sabelline, sabin, sable, sabliere, sabot, sabretache, sabulous, saburration, saccade and 1593 more...
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Logolepsy
"Luciferous Logolepsy is a collection of over 9,000 obscure English words. Though the definition of an 'English' word might seem to be straightforward, it is not. There exist so many adopted, deriv...
Anschauung, Areopagus, Argus, Briarean, Dei gratia, Dei judicium, Deo volente, Duecento, Foehn, Geflugelte Worte, Gegenschein, Hakenkreuz and 9230 more...
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Words of the day
The list of Wordnik words of the day.
panurgic, chapfallen, billingsgate, latration, witticaster, slitheroo, rux, crotchet, mirliton, arenose, ruelle, jane-of-apes and 76 more...
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Words that were new to me
but now they're not because I looked them up. In cases of polysemy or homography, *of course* it was the oddest meaning that stumped me. ;)
Procrustean bed, idem sonans, hob, backcap, quango, cheap-jack, pantechnicon, churrigueresco, chopfallen, maritorious, supererogation, catimini and 212 more...
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cutting words
sarcasm, sarx, sarcoptic, syssarcosis, shrew, shrewd, screed, scred, shroud, scroll, scrod, scrutiny and 326 more...
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Grounded Words
an Eckhartian exercise of grinding
grind, grist, refrain, ground, grit, mitochondrion, groats, grout, gruel, great, gruesome, gravel and 162 more...
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Wordnik Notebooks
All the words from the cover of the Wordnik notebook.
A few words appear twice: frass, cruet, luna, thalweg, and possibly some more.
Careful: Contains spoilers!spilth, frass, fomite, rux, worricow, alizarin, mundungus, parthenocarpy, jib, whinyard, weisure, nimiety and 217 more...
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Exquisite.
Words to my liking. (The most lovelybeautifulintricatecondecendinggratuitous.)
unequivocally, destitute, prudent, sagacious, circumspect, discreet, rash, forethought, evince, judicious, shrewd, extravagant and 227 more...
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Time Out New York
words looked up while copyediting for this magazine
tonsorial, nudnick, doyenne, lothario, ebon, compere, cloaca, carom, evince, jocosity, profligacy, favela and 110 more...
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And thus on to the conclusion
I used to do this in a Word document, but now I'm doing it in Wordie.
vis a tergo, harmattan, simoom, dionaea, albata, paktong, scagliola, ignis fatuus, brummagem, taciturn, borborygmus, graustark and 7 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for scagliola.

grant_barrett This word was chosen as Wordnik word of the day. Nov 11, 2009
matthewsouther plasterwork resembling ornamental marble Jun 14, 2009