kirigami

American  

[kir-i-gah-mee] / ˌkɪr ɪˈgɑ mi /

noun

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

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kirigami British  

/ ˌkɪrɪˈɡɑːmɪ /

noun

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

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Etymology

Origin of kirigami

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

Example Sentences

Both origami and kirigami have influenced engineers for many years.

From BBC • Mar. 3, 2026

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

From Science Magazine • Nov. 20, 2024

“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.

From New York Times • Nov. 28, 2022

The researchers’ work, which was published in an open-access paper in Nature Communications, draws heavily on their ability to predict the final shape of a gripper from the shape of the original kirigami sheet.

From The Verge • Jan. 31, 2022

The silicon electronics — including light-emitting diodes, electrodes and sensors — are connected by spring-like metal wires made using kirigami, a form of origami that uses both cutting and folding.

From Nature • Nov. 20, 2018