英和和英

語源

Ming dynasty porcelains (sense 4).

Dresden porcelains (sense 4).

From Middle French porcelaine (“cowrie, wampum; china, chinaware”), from Old Italian porcellana (“cowrie; china, chinaware”), from porcella (“female piglet”) +‎ -ana. The material was so called because of its resemblance to the shell of the cowrie. Why the cowrie was named with a word meaning “piglet” is unclear.

発音

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA: /ˈpɔːsəlɪn/
• (General American) IPA: /ˈpɔɹs(ə)lɪn/, /ˈpɔɹs(ə)lən/
• (New Zealand) IPA: /ˈpoːs(ɘ)lɘn/
• ハイフネーション: por‧ce‧lain, porc‧lain

名詞

porcelain (countable and uncountable, plural porcelains)

1. (usually uncountable) A hard white translucent ceramic, originally made by firing kaolin, quartz, and feldspar at high temperatures but now also inclusive of similar artificial materials; also often (figurative) such a material as a symbol of the fragility, elegance, etc. traditionally associated with porcelain goods.

   Tableware and toilets are both made of porcelain.

   • 2012, Andrew Martin, Underground Overground: A passenger's history of the Tube, Profile Books, →ISBN, page 136:

     Any power rail needs to be well insulated from earth, to minimise current leakage, and so the two power rails on the Underground sit on curiously genteel and antique-looking porcelain pots.

2. (usually uncountable) Synonym of china: porcelain tableware.
   • c. 1530, letter in Original Letters Illustrative of English History, Vol. II, p. 242:

     iij. potts of Erthe payntid, callyd Porseland.

   He set the table with our porcelain and stemware.

3. (uncountable, obsolete) Synonym of kaolin: the kind of clay traditionally used in China to manufacture porcelain.
   • 1599, E. de Sande, translated by Richard Hakluyt, The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of the English Nation, 2nd edition, volume II, page 91:

     [...] that earthen or pliable matter commonly called porcellan, which is pure white,... wherof vessels of all kinds are very curiously framed...

4. (countable, now usually in the plural) An object made of porcelain, (particularly) art objects or items of tableware.

   The museum has an extensive collection of rare Chinese porcelains.

5. (countable, rare) Synonym of cowrie.
   • 1601, Giovanni Botero, translated by Robert Johnson, The Trauellers Breuiat, or, An Historicall Description of the Most Famous Kingdomes in the World, page 104:

     In the kingdomes of Caiacan and Carazan, certaine sea shels are currant, which some men terme Porcelline.

6. (countable, obsolete or historical) Synonym of wampum: strings of shells, beads, etc. used as ornamentation or currency; the composite shells, beads, etc.
   • c. 1665, Pierre Esprit de Radisson, Voyages, 1885 edition, page 49:

     We mett severall gangs of men to our greatest disadvantage, ffor we weare forced to sing, and those that came to see us gave porcelaine to those that most did us injury.

7. (countable, often capitalized) A kind of pigeon with deep brown and off-white feathers.
   • 1855, The Poultry Chronicle, number 3, page 9:

     Those pretty spangled Toys [...] known by various names, as Porcelains, Hyacinths, Ermines, &c.

8. (programming, Git) The set of Git commands, such as git commit or git checkout, which control the high-level state of the repository, each typically combining the behaviour of multiple plumbing commands.

   Coordinate term: plumbing

   • 2016, Jakub Narębski, “Keeping History Clean”, in Mastering Git, Birmingham, West Midlands: Packt Publishing Ltd., page 227:

     The git(1) manpage includes a list of all the Git commands separated into porcelain and plumbing. The distinction between plumbing and porcelain commands was mentioned as a tip in Chapter 4, Managing Your Worktree, when we encountered the first low-level plumbing command without a user-facing and user-friendly porcelain equivalent.

同意語

• (all senses): china
• (porcelain tableware): chinaware

上位語

• material ceramic, earthenware

下位語

• hard-paste, soft-paste / softpaste

派生語

動詞

porcelain (third-person singular simple present porcelains, present participle porcelaining, simple past and past participle porcelained)

1. (transitive) To coat with a porcelain enamel.

参照

• “porcelain, n. and adj.”, in OED Online ⁠, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.
• “porcelain”, in Merriam-Webster.com Online Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 1996–present.
• Krueger, Dennis (December 1982). "Why On Earth Do They Call It Throwing?" Studio Potter, Vol. 11, Number 1.