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mosaic

UK/məʊˈzeɪk/US/moʊˈzeɪ.ɪk/
nounB2+Occasional — familiar, but not everyday · #10,919 of 15,258leans written

Other forms: mosaics

A mosaic is a picture built from thousands of small coloured pieces. A Roman mosaic, lay a mosaic, mosaic floor.

The pieces are called tesserae and are set into mortar, which is why so many Roman floors survive when the buildings above them do not. Byzantine mosaics used gold leaf sealed in glass, so the walls appear to glow from within.

AnonymousUnknown author · Public domain

Definitions of mosaic

  1. 1nounmosaicA picture built from thousands of small coloured pieces.B2+

    “The floor of the Roman villa was covered with a beautiful mosaic of dolphins.”

mosaic is a picture.

Where it comes from

Medieval Latin musaicum comes through Italian from a word connected with the Muses and their shrines.

  1. Middle French

    mosaïque

  2. English, today

    mosaic

From Middle French mosaïque. From Middle French mosaïque, from Italian mosaico, from Medieval Latin musaicum, from Latin musivum, from Latin museum, musaeum, probably from Ancient Greek Μουσεῖον, shrine of the Muses (Μοῦσα). a doublet of museum.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Buildings & Architecture

Practise this word

mosaic in the wild

  • Pebble mosaics were made in Tiryns in Mycenean Greece; mosaics with patterns and pictures became widespread in classical times, both in Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome.

    Mosaic

  • Early Christian basilicas from the 4th century onwards were decorated with wall and ceiling mosaics.

    Mosaic

  • The Alexander Mosaic, also known as the Battle of Issus Mosaic, is a Roman floor mosaic originally from the House of the Faun in Pompeii, Italy.

    Alexander Mosaic

  • The mosaic is considered Roman based on the broader context of its time and location in relation to the later Roman Republic.

    Alexander Mosaic

  • There are two kinds of mosaic, depending on how the matching is done.

    Photographic mosaic

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.