Definition of "ostracon" [ostracon]

• An inscribed potsherd. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "Esther Eshel of Hebrew University in Jerusalem says the ostracon is a legal document recording the surrender of a new member's personal property to the Qumran commune."
• "Every one taking an ostracon, that is, a sherd, a piece of earthenware, wrote upon it the citizen's he would have banished, and carried it to a certain part of the market-place surrounded with wooden rails."
• "That's an easy conclusion to reach given the more certain readings of the ostracon."