Etymologically
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vase

This is the current revision of this entry, as edited by bogdan on 31 October 2026 at 15:40. This address is a permanent link to this version.
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Pronunciation

  • UK: /vɑːz/, /vɔːz/[1]
  • US: /veɪ̯s/, /veɪ̯z/[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from French vase,[2][3][4][5] from Latin vās (“vessel, container”).[2][3][5][6] Etymonline finds an earlier use in a late 14th-century inventory, of a silver vessel, from Old French vas or vase.[6] The Latin word is cognate with Umbrian vasor (“vessels”), but no certain cognates outside Italic are known,[5][4] and Etymonline calls it of unknown origin.[6] Its diminutives gave English vascular and, through French, vessel.[7]

Earliest recorded meaning

In architecture, the bell-shaped body of a capital: 1563, in Shute's First Groundes of Architecture.[2][5]

Semantic evolution

The sense of a decorative vessel, as for flowers, dates from 1629,[2][5][4] and in 1706 the word is first found naming a carved or moulded ornament in that shape.[2] Johnson (1755) defined it as a vessel "rather for show than use".[8] The pronunciation has changed more than the meaning: the word was at first rhymed with base and face (Swift, Byron), as it still is in American English, while British English moved in the 19th century to a pronunciation rhyming with bores and then with bars.[7][6][2]

Timeline

  • late 14th century – a silver vessel, in an inventory.[6]
  • 1563 – the bell of a capital, in architecture (obsolete by 1753).[2][5]
  • 1629 – an ornamental vessel, as for flowers.[2][5][4]
  • 1706 – an ornament in the form of a vase.[2]
  • 1728 – a calyx or growth shaped like a vase.[2]

Meanings

Noun

  1. A vessel, often deeper than it is wide, used for holding cut flowers or as an ornament: She put the tulips in a glass vase.[9][4][2]
  2. An ornament, as on furniture or a building, shaped like such a vessel.[4][2]

Word family

  • vaselike

Usage notes

The usual British pronunciation is /vɑːz/, while American English has /veɪs/ and /veɪz/ as well as /vɑːz/.[10][2] Weekley noted that his father, who died in 1920, still used the older pronunciation, then usual in the United States.[11]

References

  1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
  3. ^ a b The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
  4. ^ a b c d e f Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
  5. ^ a b c d e f g Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
  6. ^ a b c d e Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
  7. ^ a b Ayto, John (2005), Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed., London: A & C Black
  8. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
  9. ^ Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
  10. ^ Jones, Daniel (2011), Cambridge English Pronouncing Dictionary, 18th ed., ed. Peter Roach, Jane Setter and John Esling, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
  11. ^ Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray