Dictionary

tabula en · NOUN

Pronunciation

• (Southern-England) audio
• [ˈtʰæ.bjʊ.lə] (General-American)
• /ˈtæ.bjʊ.lə/ (General-American)

Etymology

From Latin tabula. Doublet of table and tavla.

Meanings

1. (countable, uncountable) A plate or frame on which a title or inscription is carved.
   • A.D. Fragment of an inscription in a tabula carved in the rock. 1982, H. W. Pleket, R. S. Stroud, Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum [SEG]: 1978, page 227:
   • The tabula is here seen to have an irregular structure of coarse mesh whose interstices are occupied by a finer mesh. 1937, Kyancutta Museum, Memoirs - Issues 4-6, page 103:
   • The date is written above the tabula and down the right side, which is worn; the main text is written within the tabula, with each line of verse separated by an incised line. 1989, Charlotte Roueché, Joyce Maire Reynolds, Aphrodisias in Late Antiquity:
   • ... part of an ecclesiastical complex which included, to the south-east, a larger church which we called the Church of the Tabula Ansata after an inscription framed in a tabula incised on a gypsum slab in the paved floor of the presbyterium. 2009, Dirāsāt Fī Tārīkh Wa-āthār Al-Urdun, volume 10, page 762:
   • The front side has a raised border; it is decorated with a tabula between two shields. 1997, J. H. M. Strubbe, Arai Epitymbioi: Imprecations Against Desecrators of the Grave in the Greek Epitaphs of Asis Minor, page 210:
   • The lower profile is finished from the first niche (N1) up to the second tabula (T2), but to the west of T2, at O10, only its astragal is complete. 2005, Orhan Bingöl, Menderes Magnesiası, page 42:
   • It was worked separately from its foot but with its tabula which is decorated with a square, four-petaled rosette in relief. 2006, R. R. R. Smith, Roman Portrait Statuary from Aphrodisias, page 245:
2. (countable, uncountable) A table, index, or list of data.
   • The tabula displays that interpretation of planning content has more focus in the Nordic group of countries (except Iceland), than in the Baltic group – even if the countries have chosen different tools. 2008, Increased Exchange in the Building Sector, page 72:
   • Another tabula represents the rate of morbidity according to different organs and age groups. 1962, Neoplasma, page 221:
   • Another tabula on third fly-leaf, and some writing in a later hand. Titles and initials throughout in red and blue. 1908, James Maurice Wilson, Cosmo Alexander Gordon, Early Compotus Rolls of the Priory of Worcester, page 28:
   • This may be done on the spot, or the initial tabula(e) may be delineated prior to the meeting (e.g., via an agreed agenda or results from a prior session). The ongoing course of tabulation will then be an open-ended process alternating between propagation of tabulae and discursive refinement of the emerging tabular structure. 1992, Randall Whitaker, Venues for Contexture: A Critical Analysis and Enactive Reformulation of Group Decision Support Systems, page 157:
3. (countable, uncountable) A legal record.
   • However, as Ugolinus is known as an industrious, honourable man, acquainted with his subject, and who cannot easily be suspected of fraud, there is nothing against assuming the probability that at the publication of his work he had really before him such a tabula. 1850, Moses Margoliouth, A Pilgrimage to the Land of My Fathers - Volume 1, page 144:
   • The soldiers who dedicated the tabula to the empress might have had a personal connection with her, but if so, it was not a typical relationship. 2013, Julie Langford, Maternal Megalomania: Julia Domna and the Imperial Politics of Motherhood, page 23:
   • On the other hand, the acquisition of the legal estate merely as a tabula is usually not a transaction for value, and here at any rate the fact that it is conveyed in breach of an express trust will prevail to take it away. 1912, Roland Moffatt Perowne Willoughby, The Distinctions and Anomalies Arising Out of the Equitable Doctrine of the Legal Estate, page 74:
   • However, proclamation was to be made of the offence and the misdeed inscribed on a 'tabula' in the Guildhall, so that citizens and other inhabitants might be warned not to employ him in any spiritual office. 2014, Fernanda Pirie, Judith Scheele, Legalism: Community and Justice:
4. (countable, uncountable) A writing-tablet, slate, or similar medium on which to write.
   • Can we send them a message? With your tabula perhaps, the way Olwen did when Moira needed you? 2014, Alyxandra Harvey, A Breath of Frost, page 403:
   • The mind is a tabula to engrave the story of reality's cataclysmic impacts, the individual—a tool through which history confides it to mankind. 2014, Albena Lutzkanova-Vassileva, The Testimonies of Russian and American Postmodern Poetry, page 60:
   • On the tabula of the mind she tried to write the word. 2010, John Lawton, A Lily of the Field:
5. (countable, uncountable) A frontal; a drapery for an altar.
   • Another tabula in the Textile Museum in Washington D.C. probably belonged to the same textile. 2004, Sabine Schrenk, Textilien des Mittelmeerraumes aus spätantiker bis tru:hisiamischer Zeit, Abegg-Stiftung, page 470:
   • Another tabula in Paris shows the same characteristics but even more progressively stylized and is therefore dated to the Arabian period, eighth to ninth century. 2005, Peter Noever, Angela Völker, Fragile remnants, page 57:
   • Another tabula ( cat.89 ) recalls the naturalistic concept of the classic Graeco-Roman portrait, in widespread use up to the 4th or 5th century. 2006, HALI: The International Journal of Oriental Carpets and Textiles, page 111:
6. (historical, uncountable) An ancient Roman game similar to backgammon that was played on a board with 24 divisions.
   • Two men hunched in silence over black and white counters on a tabula board which had been carved around the edge with scenes of warriors at arms. 2011, James Wilde, Hereward, page 209:
   • A bronze mirror from about 200 B.C. depicts a young man and a young woman playing tabula. 2002, Steve Craig, Sports and Games of the Ancients, page 113:
   • Such was his urgency, he entered the healers' wagon without warning those inside, which was a mistake, for Lanna was playing tabula with Ramon on the rear pallet – and both were naked. 2015, David Hair, Ascendant's Rite:
   • Readers may like to make a tabula board and try a simple game from France using two cubic dice. 1974, Games & Puzzles - Issues 21-31, page 5:
7. (countable, uncountable) One of the transverse plates found in the calicles of certain corals and hydroids.
   • Septa from 110 to 124, of two orders. The principal ones can be traced almost to the centre as crests on the tabulæ. The secondaries scarcely attain 4 millimetres, including the epitheca. They often bend towards the primaries, and are united by a few dissepiments (or rather the subdivided margins of the tabulæ). These latter are large, and virtually extend across the entire visceral chamber. The fossula (well seen in fig. 4) is formed by a deep inflexion of the tabulæ, the septa bending round with the margin of the depression. 1884, The Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London, volume the fortieth, page 501:
   • Frontal with a tabula, with a crescent of small, slit-like pores. 1968, Danish Science Press, Atlantide Report: Scientific Results of the Danish Expedition to the Coasts of Tropical West Africa, 1945-1946, Aarhuus Stiftsbogtrykkerie, page 220:
   • Fig. 12.5. Tabulate, rugose and scleractinian corals. i. Portion of a colony of Favosites. Note the very minute corallites closely packed together. ii. The chain coral Halysites, one corallite partially cut away to expose tabulae. 1987, E. W. Nield, Drawing & Understanding Fossils: A Theoretical and Practical Guide for Beginners, with Self-assessment, Pergamon Press, →ISBN, page 92:
   • When fully developed (fig. 66), they are transverse plates, which extend completely across the visceral chamber, and divide it into a series of stories placed one above the other, the only living portion of the coral being above the last formed tabula. Tabulæ are found in various of the Zoantharia sclerodermata, in some of the Alcyonaria, and in a great many of the Rugosa. 1879, Henry Alleyne Nicholson, A Manual of Palæontology for the Use of Students with a General Introduction on the Principles of Palæontology, 2nd edition, volume I, Edinburgh and London: William Blackwood and Sons, page 183:
   • The tabulæ may be well developed, approximately horizontal, remote plates, as is usually the case in Zaphrentis and Amplexus, or they may anastomoze in various ways, and become so intimately connected with one another as to give rise to a species of vesicular tissue. 1877, “Corals”, in The Encyclopædia Britannica: a Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, and General Literature, 9th edition, volume VI, Edinburgh: Adam and Charles Black, page 383:
   • The latter differs strictly from Buffonellodes in lacking oral spines, and in possessing an ectooecial tabula and supplementary acute frontal avicularia, and requires a new genus. 2018, Patricia L. Cook, Philip E. Bock, Peter J. Hayward, Dennis P. Gordon, “3. Class Gymnolaemata, Order Cheilostomata”, in Patricia L. Cook, Philip E. Bock, Dennis P. Gordon, Haylee J. Weaver, editors, Australian Bryozoa, volume 2: “Taxonomy of Australian Families”, CSIRO Publishing, →ISBN, “7. Taxonomic treatments of families of Cheilostomata”, “Australian diversity”, page 203:
   • In the axially sectioned, middle part of the corallite, tabulae are complete, leaning at approximately 50° from the corallite wall to its axis. 1972, Bull. K. Belg. Inst. Nat. Wet, page 69:
   • Dactylostyles absent but, at and below coenosteal level, dactylopore tubes contain a series of incomplete tabulae (herein termed pseudotabulae), each approximately 10 μm thick and spaced 50–70 μm apart (Plate 21, c, d0. Pseudo-tabulae originate from opposing lateral and sometimes anterior edges of the dactylopore tube but never quite meet to form complete tabulae. 1989, New Zealand Oceanographic Institute Memoir, page 38:

Forms

Relateds

tabulate · tabulated · tabula ansata · tabulation · tabular · tabula rasa · tabula lusoria