Obolus

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A silver coin minted in Ancient Greece, valued at a sixth of a drachma.
  2. 2
    Alternative form of obelus. alt-of, alternative

    "The Globe editors have marked it with the obolus according to their explanation in the preface: "Whenever a lacuna occurs too great to be filled out with any approach to certainty by conjecture, we have marked the passage with an obolus (†)"."

  3. 3
    a Greek unit of weight equal to one tenth of a gram wordnet
  4. 4
    A unit of weight, equal to one-sixth of a drachma. historical

    "Dav. […] And after that I met the boy of Chremes With fishes, and an obolus of herbs."

Synonyms

All synonyms
dagger

Example

More examples

"Dav. […] And after that I met the boy of Chremes With fishes, and an obolus of herbs."

Etymology

From Latin obolus, from Ancient Greek ὀβολός (obolós), from ὀβελός (obelós). Doublet of obole and pul.

More for "obolus"

SynonymsSentencesPronunciationTranslate

Next best steps

Find stronger synonymsSee usage examplesCheck pronunciationBrowse writing guides

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.