tokonoma
Americannoun
Etymology
Origin of tokonoma
1895–1900; < Japanese, equivalent to toko (raised) floor + -no grammatical particle + ma room
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Set in a garden among plum and kiwi trees, the cottage has traditional tatami mats, shoji-paper and fusuma sliding doors, chunky wooden cabinets and tokonoma alcoves.
From Seattle Times • Apr. 18, 2023
It may, in extreme cases, be much less; for a certain kind of Japanese garden can be contrived small enough to put in a tokonoma.
From Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan Second Series by Hearn, Lafcadio
Cats are mischievous: they tear the mattings, and make holes in the shoji, and sharpen their claws upon the pillars of tokonoma.
From Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan Second Series by Hearn, Lafcadio
Kano sat as she had left him, motionless, now, as the white jade vase within the tokonoma.
From The Dragon Painter by Fenollosa, Mary McNeil
On the tokonoma, in a rare bronze of Sung workmanship, lay a single morning-glory—the queen of the whole garden!
From The Book of Tea by Okakura, Kakuzo
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
