| The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition. 2000. |
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| china |
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| SYLLABICATION: | chi·na |
| PRONUNCIATION: |  ch  n |
| NOUN: | 1. High-quality porcelain or ceramic ware, originally made in China. 2. Porcelain or earthenware used for the table. | | ETYMOLOGY: | Persian chn, ultimately from Chinese (Mandarin) Qín, Qin. See Qin. | | WORD HISTORY: | Our term china for porcelain or ceramic ware is a shortening of chinaware and probably china dishes. Although the word china is identical in spelling to the name of the country, there are 16th- and 17th-century spellings like chiney, cheny, and cheney that reflect the borrowing into English of the Persian term for this porcelain, chn. The Persian word and the Sanskrit word cn  , “Chinese people,” which gave us the English name for the country, go back to the Chinese word Qín, the name of the dynasty that ruled China from 221 to 206 b.c.
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| The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by the Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. |
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