Gladius
noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 A Roman sword roughly two feet long. historical
"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."
- 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."
Example
More examples"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."
Etymology
From Latin gladius (“Roman short sword, gladius”). Doublet of glaive.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.