gladius

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Noun

gladius (plural gladiuses)

1. (historical) A Roman sword roughly two feet long.
   • 1882, "The Genesis of the Sword", Popular Science Monthly, Volume 21, page 81:

     Finally, the Romans made the gladius—sharp, of highly-tempered steel, and strongly piercing—the first real sword (Figs. 17, 18, 19), of which only five specimens are now known to exist.

2. (zoology) A pen, a hard internal bodypart of certain cephalopods, made of chitin-like material.
   • 2017, Mark Carnall, The Guardian, 31 October ↗:

     From the Cretaceous of North America fossilised gladii in the enigmatic genus Tusoteuthis have been estimated to give a mantle length (body size) of 1.8m, just less than that of the giant squid’s.

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