gladius

noun
/ˈɡlæd.i.əs/

Etymology

From Latin gladius (“Roman short sword, gladius”). Doublet of glaive.

  1. borrowed from gladius — “Roman short sword, gladius

Definitions

  1. A Roman sword roughly two feet long.

    • Finally, the Romans made the gladius—sharp, of highly-tempered steel, and strongly piercing—the first real sword (Figs. 17, 18, 19), of which only five specimens are now known to exist.
    • The gladius was effective either for cutting or for thrusting and was used by legionaries and auxiliaries.
  2. A pen, a hard internal bodypart of certain cephalopods, made of chitin-like material.

    • From the Cretaceous of North America fossilised gladii in the enigmatic genus Tusoteuthis have been estimated to give a mantle length (body size) of 1.8m, just less than that of the giant squid’s.

The neighborhood

Vish — recursive loop

No curated loop yet for gladius. Loops are being traced one word at a time while the ingestion pipeline matures.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA