Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A fine clay used in ceramics and refractories, as a filler or coating for paper and textiles, as an additive in food and toothpaste, and as an antidiarrheal drug.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A fine variety of clay, resulting from the decomposition of feldspar.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun (Min.) A very pure white clay, ordinarily in the form of an impalpable powder, and used to form the paste of porcelain; China clay; porcelain clay. It is chiefly derived from the decomposition of common feldspar.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A fine clay, rich in kaolinite, used in ceramics, paper-making, etc.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a fine usually white clay formed by the weathering of aluminous minerals (as feldspar); used in ceramics and as an absorbent and as a filler (e.g., in paper)

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[French, from Mandarin Gāolíng, a mountain of Jiangxi province.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Mandarin 高陵 (gāolíng, "high hill"), in Jingdezhen, Jiangxi province, China, the location where this clay was first found.

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Examples

Comments

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  • "My work required careful research (as patient as Gutenberg taking his time making an ink that was neither too fluid nor not fluid enough) to find a discrete way to starch the lips of these slits. I used kaolin."

    Savage by Jacques Jouet, translated by Amber Shields, p 58 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback edition

    October 13, 2012

  • It is a community in Pennsylvania, isn't it?

    October 13, 2012

  • "Porcelain is traditionally made from two essential ingredients: kaolin, also called china clay, a silicate mineral that gives porcelain its plasticity, its structure; and petunse, or pottery stone, which lends the ceramic its translucency and hardness. Kaolin is the more essential ingredient—a potter’s clay is meant to exist, like his glazes, in variations—and it takes its name from a mountain in Jingdezhen, China, where porcelain was first created, more than a thousand years ago, called Gaoling, which means “high ridge.” The name was recorded incorrectly by a Jesuit priest, Pere d’Entrecolles, in the early eighteenth century, in his letters home describing the Chinese technique."

    -- http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-european-obsession-with-porcelain

    November 12, 2015