ガラス

Dutch glas is the main source form for Japanese ガラス. Nihon Kokugo Daijiten marks ガラス as Dutch glas and defines it as a hard, brittle, transparent material made by melting silica sand, soda ash, and lime at high temperature. Dutch glas itself means both the material and a drinking vessel. A related Japanese entry on 薩摩ガラス notes successful production of red transparent glass in Satsuma in 1851. The borrowing belongs to the early modern and modern technical vocabulary of materials, medicine, trade, and craft. Before ガラス became standard, Japanese also used ビードロ from Portuguese vidro and ギヤマン, often linked with Dutch diamant, for imported glassware and cut glass. As industrial production grew in the late Edo and Meiji periods, ガラス became the common material word in compounds such as 窓ガラス, 板ガラス, 色ガラス, ガラス瓶, and ガラス戸. Today ガラス mainly names the material, panes, bottles, and glass products. English glass has the same material meaning but also commonly means a drinking vessel; Japanese often uses グラス for that vessel and コップ for an everyday cup. Science classes also use ガラス棒 and ガラス管 for lab tools. A compact example is 窓ガラスが割れた. Dutch glas and Japanese ガラス overlap in material meaning but differ in everyday object labels.