vase
Americannoun
noun
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of vase
1555–65; < French < Latin vās vessel
Explanation
The tall container you put flowers in is a vase. Thanks for the enormous bouquet of daisies — I'll need to find a large enough vase to fit them in! A vase is a glass or ceramic container that serves only a decorative function — in other words, you're unlikely to serve a guest a big glass of lemonade in a vase. Vases are generally tall and narrow, to accommodate flower stems. Some vases are curvy and others are straight. In North America, vase usually rhymes with "face," which was its original English pronunciation, though modern British speakers say it so it rhymes with "blahs" instead.
Vocabulary lists containing vase
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
On the fireplace mantel is a hot-dog candle, which matches the hot-dog vase in the kitchen, both of which go nicely with her “In My Hot Dog Era” T-shirt.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 20, 2026
He tweaked the images, removing plastic gloves and flipping objects like a vase sideways to make for a more engaging composition.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 8, 2026
The video also showed Kim presenting Lukashenko with a large mosaic vase bearing a portrait of the Belarusian, with the North Korean leader appearing to explain that crafting it involved around 30 seashells.
From Barron's ● Mar. 26, 2026
In “An Experiment,” an assistant draws the curtains on the moon to heighten the uplighting from a candle beneath a vase of water that contains a submerged skull.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 14, 2026
And the alabaster vase stood, as it had always done, on the table behind the sofa....
From "Rebecca" by Daphne du Maurier
Back at Paultons Park the zoo had devised miniature vases designed to keep the stems alive while preventing any newly hatched nymphs from falling into water.
From BBC ● Jul. 9, 2026
Orbiting the fish is a constellation of things and signs: flora, flags, stars, vases, moons, arrows, a human‑headed flower, a zygote and a Christian cross.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 8, 2026
Elegant hand-blown glass vases sit beside ceramic crater pots on warm cherry shelves.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 18, 2026
In a trip in November 2013 to Vincenzo Caffarella, a decorative arts and antiques shop in London, £170,000 was allegedly spent on a "vast amount of property" including Venetian lamps and vases.
From BBC ● Apr. 28, 2026
On every vessel—blooming from wine cups and jugs and vases and bowls—the simple eight- petaled flowers caught one’s attention and seized it as if they would never let go.
From "A Single Shard" by Linda Sue Park
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
