clayとは

意味・読み方・使い方

語源

From Middle English cley, clay, from 古期英語 clǣġ (“clay”), from Proto-West Germanic *klaij, from Proto-Germanic *klajjaz (“clay”), from Proto-Indo-European *gley- (“to glue, paste, stick together”).^[1]

Cognate with Dutch klei (“clay”), Low German Klei (“clay”), German Klei, Danish klæg (“clay”); compare Ancient Greek γλία (glía), Latin glūten (“glue”) (whence ultimately English glue), Ukrainian ґлей (glej, “clay”). Related also to clag, clog.

発音

• enPR: klā, IPA^(key): /kleɪ/, [kl̥eɪ]
• 韻: -eɪ

名詞

clay (usually uncountable, 複数形 clays)

1. A mineral substance made up of small crystals of silica and alumina, that is ductile when moist; the material of pre-fired ceramics.
   • 1914, Louis Joseph Vance, chapter I, in Nobody, New York, N.Y.: George H[enry] Doran Company, published 1915, OCLC 40817384:

     Three chairs of the steamer type, all maimed, comprised the furniture of this roof-garden, with (by way of local colour) on one of the copings a row of four red clay flower-pots filled with sun-baked dust […].

2. An earth material with ductile qualities.
3. (tennis) A tennis court surface made of crushed stone, brick, shale, or other unbound mineral aggregate.

   The French Open is played on clay.

4. (biblical) The material of the human body.
   • 1611, Old Testament, King James Version, Job 10:8-9:

     Thine hands have made me and fashioned me together round about...thou hast made me as the clay.

   • 1611, Old Testament, King James Version, Isaiah 64:8:

     But now, O Lord, thou art our Father; we are the clay, and thou art our potter; and we are the work of thy hand.

5. (geology) A particle less than 3.9 microns in diameter, following the Wentworth scale.
6. A clay pipe for smoking tobacco.
7. (firearms, informal) A clay pigeon.

   We went shooting clays at the weekend.

8. (informal) Land or territory of a country or other political region, especially when subject to territorial claims

   Danzig is rightfully German clay.

反意語

• (material of the human body): soul, spirit

下位語

• kaolin, kaoline
• ball clay
• fire clay
• potter's clay

派生語

参考

• alluvium

動詞

clay (三人称単数 現在形 clays, 現在分詞 claying, 過去形および過去分詞形 clayed)

1. (transitive) To add clay to, to spread clay onto.
2. (transitive, of sugar) To purify using clay.
   • 1776, Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Book IV, Chapter 7: Of Colonies, Part 2: Causes of Prosperity of New Colonies,

     They amounted, therefore, to a prohibition, at first of claying or refining sugar for any foreign market, and at present of claying or refining it for the market, which takes off, perhaps, more than nine-tenths of the whole produce.

   • 1809, Jonathan Williams, On the Process of Claying Sugar, in Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, Volume 6.
   • 1985, Stuart B. Schwartz, Sugar Plantations in the Formation of Brazilian Society: Bahia, 1550-1835‎^[1], page 200:

     The Portuguese had mastered the technique of claying sugar, and other European nations tried to learn the secrets from them.

参照