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• delft
  delft

  noun

  earthenware having an opaque white glaze with an overglaze decoration, usually in blue.
• Delft
  Delft

  noun

  a city in W Netherlands.

delft

¹ American  

[delft] / dɛlft /

Also delf

noun

1. earthenware having an opaque white glaze with an overglaze decoration, usually in blue.

2. any pottery resembling this.

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Delft ² American  

[delft] / dɛlft /

noun

1. a city in W Netherlands.

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Delft British  

/ dɛlft /

noun

1. a town in the SW Netherlands, in South Holland province. Pop: 97 000 (2003 est)

2. Also called: delftware.  tin-glazed earthenware made in Delft since the 17th century, typically having blue decoration on a white ground

3. a similar earthenware made in England

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Etymology

Origin of delft

First recorded in 1705–15; after Delft

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

delft Delft

The gently moving backdrops, painted deep delft blue, looked like they had sprung from a sumptuous picture book.

From New York Times ● Jul. 13, 2018

Key pieces: Call us old-fashioned, but our favorite piece was a more traditional delft blue twill suit.

From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 6, 2014

Royal weddings were routinely marked with goblets or delft plates, but it was not until the coronation of King George II in 1727 that manufacturers were allowed to reproduce the monarch's likeness.

From The Guardian ● Mar. 20, 2011

And his mother had gone off shopping to buy linen for the house at Cushendhu, poplin for dresses, delft from Holland for the kitchen and glass from Waterford for the sideboard in the dining-room.

From The Wind Bloweth by Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne

Her smart gown of delft blue crêpe set off her dazzlingly fair skin and heavy auburn hair to perfection.

From Marjorie Dean, High School Junior by Pauline Lester

One of those is Powall, a start-up in the Dutch city of Delft that is developing commercial-scale equipment for nanocoating the powders that are the raw materials of today's batteries.

From BBC ● Sep. 10, 2026

After 1657 he painted largely on behalf of Pieter van Ruijven and Maria de Knuijt, a wealthy Delft couple.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 26, 2026

The paper was written by researchers from the University of Chicago, Stanford University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Innsbruck in Austria, and the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands.

From Science Daily ● Jan. 27, 2026

In addition to the Arts and Crafts movement, tile artists began producing a wide variety of works inspired by traditional Mexican and Indigenous designs, as well as European styles like Delft.

From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 18, 2025

The great Dutch painter Jan Vermeer has been called the Sphinx of Delft, for all his paintings have a degree of mystery.

From "History of Art, Volume 1" by H.W. Janson