Other forms: ceramics
A ceramic is an object made of clay hardened by firing. Pottery, tiles, bricks, and the inside of a spark plug.
Firing changes the clay permanently, which is why a fired pot cannot be softened again with water. The word covers craft and engineering equally, since advanced ceramics are used in armour, brake discs and heat shields for exactly the properties that make a plate hard and brittle. As an adjective it describes the material, and the plural ceramics also names the art of making them.
Ceramic is potter's work. Greek keramos meant potter's clay, and the root behind it may mean to heat or to burn, which would put the fire in the name.
Proto-Indo-European
*ker- — to heat, burn, fire
Ancient Greek
κεραμικός — potter's
English, today
ceramic
Built from
From Ancient Greek κεραμικός (“potter's”), from κέραμος (“potter's clay”), perhaps from a pre-Hellenic word or from Proto-Indo-European ker- (“to heat, burn, fire”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in A Man Called Ove
First appears in chapter 7 of A Man Called Ove.
Practise this word