vase

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. An open container, as of glass or porcelain, used for holding flowers or for ornamentation.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. A hollow vessel, generally high in proportion to its horizontal diameter, and decorative in character and purpose. The term is sometimes restricted to such vessels when made withont covers and without handles, or with two equal and symmetrical handles; but in the widest sense, as in speaking of Greek and other ancient vases, ves-sels of any form whatever are included. As a branch of art development, by far the most important production of vases was that of the ancient Greeks during the creative period of their art history, for many centuries previous to 200 B C. The greater part of the Greek vases are in fine pottery, unglazed, and decorated with monochrome and outline designs in simple pigments. They are notable not only for the great beauty and appropriateness of much of the decoration, but for the supreme elegance, unattained among other peoples, of a large proportion of the forms. These Greek vases were in actual use in antiquity, not only as ornaments, but as utensils for the various purposes in every-day life. See Greek art (under Greek) and vase-painting, and the cuts under the names of the different forms of vases, as amphora, crater, hydria, oxybaphon, prochoös, sţamnos.
2. n. Hence An object designed usually for ornament, but sometimes for other specific purposes, having somewhat the form and appearance of the vessel in the primary sense. Such vases are often made of marble, or of metal, in an antique or pseudo-antique form, and are used to hold flowers, to decorate gate-posts, monuments, and the like, or are placed on a socle or pedestal, or in a range on an architectural parapet, façade, or frontispiece. Compare cut under affix.
3. n. The body of the Corinthian and Composite capital: sometimes called tambour or drum.

Wiktionary

1. n. A container used mainly for displaying fresh, dried, or artificial flowers.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. A vessel adapted for various domestic purposes, and anciently for sacrificial uses; especially, a vessel of antique or elegant pattern used for ornament; See Illust. of Portland vase, under Portland.
2. n. A vessel similar to that described in the first definition above, or the representation of one in a solid block of stone, or the like, used for an ornament, as on a terrace or in a garden. See Illust. of Niche.
3. n. The body, or naked ground, of the Corinthian and Composite capital; -- called also tambour, and drum.
4. n. (Bot.) The calyx of a plant.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. an open jar of glass or porcelain used as an ornament or to hold flowers