dado

plural dados · plural dadoes

1. architectureThe section of a pedestal above the base.
2. architectureThe lower portion of an interior wall decorated differently from the upper portion.

   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

   1 more example

   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

3. businessA 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 28, Logan Wittmer, “Whiskey Cabinet”, in Popular Woodworking, volume 290, number 4, page 56

present singular third person dadoes · participle present dadoing · participle past dadoed · past dadoed

1. transitivearchitectureTo furnish with a dado.
2. transitivebusinessTo cut a dado.

plural Dados

1. A surname.