Ceramics

How to spell ceramics

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce ceramics

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does ceramics mean?

1. nounThe art or practice of making objects from fired clay, or such objects considered collectively.

Ceramics in a sentence

• She signed up for an evening class in ceramics at the local college.

• The museum devoted a whole gallery to ancient ceramics recovered from the site.

Where does ceramics come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This word traces back to the ancient Greek keramos, which literally meant 'potter's clay' or an object fashioned from fired earth. From that root the Greeks formed keramikos, an adjective meaning 'of pottery', describing anything to do with the working of clay. The term reached English in the nineteenth century, chiefly through scientific and artistic writing about the materials produced by firing clay at high heat. The plural form 'ceramics' came to name both the craft itself and the collective body of fired-clay objects it produces. A useful spelling anchor is the soft opening 'cer-', which sounds like 'ser' yet is written with a c, exactly as in the related noun 'ceramic'.

How the word is built

• ceram- (from Greek keramos: potter's clay)
• -ic (relating to)
• -s (plural/collective noun)