Meaning & use
dado
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Meanings
nouncountablespecialist
The lower section of an interior wall, set off from the part above with paneling, paint or a border.
Grammar: Countable: the dado runs about waist high around the room.
Patterns
- a dado of something
- a dado rail
The dining room has a dark wooden dado and pale walls above.
They painted the dado a soft green to hide scuffs.
A decorative dado rail runs along the hallway.
nouncountabletechnical
A square or rectangular groove cut across the grain of a board so that another board can fit into it.
Grammar: Countable; in woodworking, to dado is also a verb, as in dado a shelf.
Patterns
- cut a dado
- a dado joint
He cut a dado in the side panel to hold the shelf.
A dado joint makes bookcases much stronger than nails alone.
The router left a clean dado across the plank.
Word forms
| plural | dados or dadoes |
|---|
Common combinations
- dado rail
- The dado rail protects the plaster from chair backs.
- dado joint
- The cabinet maker used a dado joint for each shelf.
- cut a dado
- Cut a dado a quarter of the way into the board.
- dado blade
- A stacked dado blade can cut wide grooves in a single pass.
- paneled dado
- The old library has a paneled dado of oak.
Synonyms and how they differ
- wainscot
- Wainscot usually means the wood paneling on the lower part of a wall, so it describes the material rather than the whole zone.
- chair rail
- A chair rail is only the molding strip at the top of that area, while dado names the whole lower section.
- groove
- Groove is the general word for any channel, whereas a dado is a specific kind cut across the grain to take another board.
- housing
- Housing is the British woodworking term for a groove cut across the grain, equivalent to the second sense of dado.
Word family
Practice
A carpenter cuts a dado in a board in order to ___.
Choose one answer.
A dado is a groove cut across the wood that another piece slots into. A round hole is a different cut, and gluing end to end uses no groove.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “dado”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.