porcelain
[pawr-suh-lin, pohr-; pawrs-lin, pohrs-]
- a strong, vitreous, translucent ceramic material, biscuit-fired at a low temperature, the glaze then fired at a very high temperature.
- ware made from this.
Show More
Origin of porcelain
Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2018
Examples from the Web for porcelain
Contemporary Examples
Goldblum, himself looking prim with a porcelain saucer and teacup in hand, says he found this “wildly touching.”
So how the hell do you work with a Belle Époque, over-the-top, over-gilded house full of French porcelain and furniture?
This is done by an artist who looks at the makeup [from the show] and replicates it onto the porcelain.
It eats through and corrodes the porcelain and then the wood flooring beneath it and, boom, down it comes.
Her skin was porcelain, her cheeks hollow, and her hair had been cut into high, blunt bangs.
Historical Examples
If the one be porcelain, and the other earthen ware, both are brittle!
Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. IIFrancis Augustus Cox
I haven't a single child that has not won the porcelain cross for obedience.
City of Endless NightMilo Hastings
Why should not the manufacture of porcelain equally enrich the Elector?
Self-HelpSamuel Smiles
Barter returned to the porcelain slab banked with the lights and the keys.
The Mind MasterArthur J. Burks
They are all covered with cloth and rubber and are fastened with glass or porcelain knobs.
Common ScienceCarleton W. Washburne
porcelain
- a more or less translucent ceramic material, the principal ingredients being kaolin and petuntse (hard paste) or other clays, ground glassy substances, soapstone, bone ash, etc
- an object made of this or such objects collectively
- (modifier) of, relating to, or made from this materiala porcelain cup
Show More
Word Origin
C16: from French porcelaine, from Italian porcellana cowrie shell, porcelain (from its shell-like finish), literally: relating to a sow (from the resemblance between a cowrie shell and a sow's vulva), from porcella little sow, from porca sow, from Latin; see pork
Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition
© William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins
Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012
Word Origin and History for porcelain
n.
1530s, from Middle French porcelaine and directly from Italian porcellana "porcelain" (13c.), literally "cowrie shell," the chinaware so called from resemblance of its lustrous transparency to the shiny surface of the shells. The shell's name in Italian is from porcella "young sow," fem. of Latin porcellus "young pig," diminutive of porculus "piglet," diminutive of porcus "pig" (see pork (n.)). According to an old theory, the connection of the shell and the pig is a perceived resemblance of the shell opening to the exposed outer genitalia of pigs.
porcelain is china & china is p.; there is no recondite difference between the two things, which indeed are not two, but one; & the difference between the two words is merely that china is the homely term, while porcelain is exotic & literary. [Fowler]
Show More
Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2010 Douglas Harper