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prettygoodword ([personal profile] prettygoodword) wrote2010-03-02 07:34 am

scagliola

scagliola (skal-YOH-luh) - n., plasterwork imitating ornamental marble.


Plaster which has had a surface layer of marble dust glued on. Borrowed from Italian in either the mid-16th or mid-18th centuries (dictionaries disagree), where it is the diminutive of scaglia, chip, from Gothic skalja, tile, thus making it a Germanic cognate of shell.

---L.