Vase

How to spell vase

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce vase

What does vase mean?

1. nounAn ornamental open container, typically used to hold cut flowers or for decorative display.

Vase in a sentence

• She arranged the fresh roses in a tall glass vase on the table.

• The antique vase on the mantelpiece was worth more than the house contents combined.

Where does vase come from?

Language of origin: French

The word came into English in the seventeenth century from the French vase, meaning a vessel or container, which descended directly from the Latin vas, the ordinary word for a 'vessel', 'dish', or 'utensil'. In classical Latin vas was a broad term that could cover everything from a humble cooking pot to a ceremonial container, and its plural vasa gave rise to a whole family of words about hollow containers. The same root survives in the anatomical and biological sense of 'vessel', as in 'vascular', which describes the tubes that carry blood or sap. English adopted vase specifically for an ornamental open container, often one made to hold cut flowers or to be admired in its own right. Because the spelling was taken over wholesale from French, it keeps the simple four-letter shape and offers little phonetic clue, which is partly why British and American speakers ended up pronouncing it so differently.

How the word is built

• vase (whole word from Latin vas: vessel, container); no productive prefix or suffix