kirigami

[kir-i-gah-mee]

noun

1. the Japanese art or technique of cutting and folding paper into objects or designs.

kirigami

/ ˌkɪrɪˈɡɑːmɪ /

noun

1. the art, originally Japanese, of folding and cutting paper into decorative shapes Compare origami

Word History and Origins

Origin of kirigami¹

First recorded in 1960–65; from Japanese kiri “to cut” + kami “paper”

Word History and Origins

Origin of kirigami¹

C20: from Japanese

Example Sentences

Physicists in South Korea have honed their detector for hypothetical dark matter particles called axions by borrowing concepts from unlikely sources: strange constructs called metamaterials, and kirigami, a form of origami in which paper can be both cut and folded.

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In kirigami, a piece of paper can be patterned to expand the same way, as Youn learned from a colleague’s father over dinner.

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Ultimately, he found his inspiration in a book about the Japanese art of kirigami, a form of origami that incorporates cutting and slicing.

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“One Fourth of July,” he recalled, “I went to the hammock in my backyard, and sketched out a bunch of concepts,” basing the sketches on the designs he’d seen in the kirigami book.

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So, for example, a 2D kirigami sheet with a circular boundary will, when cut correctly, fold into a sphere.

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