decorative art
noun
art that is meant to be useful as well as beautiful, as ceramics, furniture, jewelry, and textiles.
Usually decorative arts. any of the arts, as ceramics or jewelry making, whose works are created to be useful.
works of decorative art collectively.
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Lexical Investigations: ArtA motley combination of Anglo-Saxon, Latin, and Germanic dialects, the English language (more or less as we know it) coalesced between the 9th and 13th centuries. Since then, it has continued to import and borrow words and expressions from around the world, and the meanings have mutated. (Awesome and awful once meant nearly the same thing.) Some specimens in the English vocabulary have followed unusually circuitous routes …
Nearby words
- decorated shed,
- decorated style,
- decoration,
- decoration day,
- decorative,
- decorative arts,
- decorator,
- decorous,
- decorously,
- decorticate
Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2019