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portico

noun

Simple meaning

A porch or entrance to a building made up of a covered and often columned area.

Pronunciation

Say it like this:

pawrtuhkoh

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US device voice
IPA pronunciation (US)

ˈpɔɹtəkoʊ

This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.

IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.

Word Review

Definition

Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.

noun

  1. A porch or entrance to a building consisting of a covered and often columned area

  2. A porch, or a small space with a roof supported by columns, serving as the entrance to a building.

  3. The Stoic philosophy (after the public porch on the agora of Athens where Zeno taught).

Word at a Glance

Difficulty
C2 · Proficient (estimated)
Frequency
Rare
Formality
Technical

Word Aura™

How this word commonly comes across.

Aura for this meaning

This meaning: A porch or entrance to a building consisting of a covered and often columned area

Used this way, portico is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It usually sounds natural in a wide range of settings.

Emotional tone
Neutral
Formality
Neutral
Intensity
Not strongly marked
How common
Moderately common
Connotation
Matter-of-fact
Usage feel
Neutral and straightforward

Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.

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Common Patterns and Combinations

How this word naturally appears with others.

south porticonorth porticofront porticoeast porticoentrance porticodoric porticoionic porticoopen portico

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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.