Other forms: vases
A vase is the container you put cut flowers in — taller than it is wide, narrower at the neck, holding a few inches of water. The glass one on the windowsill; the heavy china one on your grandmother's sideboard that nobody is allowed to touch.
Not every vase holds flowers. Museums are full of Greek vases painted with black figures, and there a vase is simply a decorative vessel with a foot and a mouth. The pronunciation splits the English-speaking world: British speakers rhyme it with cars, Americans rhyme it with face, and each is right where it is said. Keep it apart from a jug, which has a handle and a lip for pouring, and from a pot, which is for growing rather than cutting. Flowers go IN a vase, and you arrange them in it.
1nounvaseA tall, narrow-necked container for holding cut flowers.~8%
“She cut the stems short and stood them in a vase of cold water.”
2noundecorativeA decorative vessel, especially an ornamental or ancient one.~92%
“The museum's Greek vase shows a chariot race around its belly.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 13 sentences found in the wild and placed 13 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
vase is a container.
Vase came through Middle French vase from Latin vas. English later borrowed that same Latin word again untouched, as vas, the anatomical term for a vessel in the body — so vase and vas are twins that took different boats.
Latin
vas
Middle French
vase
English, today
vase
Middle French vase, from Latin vas. a doublet of vas.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA