dado

noun, verb — 5 senses

dado

noun

UK /ˈdeɪdəʊ/ · US /ˈdeɪdoʊ/

Etymology From Italian dado, first attested in 1664.

1

Architecture The section of a pedestal above the base.

2

Architecture The lower portion of an interior wall decorated differently from the upper portion.

  • Like a dado round the room was the jutting line of splendid heavy game-heads, the best of their sort from every quarter of the world, with the rare white rhinoceros of the Lado Enclave drooping its supercilious lip above them all.1912, Arthur Conan Doyle, The Lost World […], London; New York, N.Y.: Hodder and Stoughton, →OCLC:
  • Hangings of tapestry were behind the high seats, worked with flowers, snake’s-head, snapdragon, dragon-mouth, and their kind; and on the dado below the windows were sculptures of birds and beasts and creeping things.1922, E[ric] R[ücker] Eddison, The Worm Ouroboros: A Romance, London: Jonathan Cape […], →OCLC, page 3:
3

Business, Carpentry, Construction, Manufacturing A rectangular channel in a board cut across the grain.

  • Next, cut stopped dadoes in the shelf and the underside of the top for the vertical dividers.2026 August 23, Logan Wittmer, “Whiskey Cabinet”, in Popular Woodworking, volume 290, number 4, page 56:

dado

verb

Etymology From Italian dado, first attested in 1664.

1

Architecture To furnish with a dado.

Derived terms
dado rail

Entry derived from the Wiktionary, under licence CC BY-SA 4.0 — list of authors.

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