origami means the Japanese art of paper folding.
origami is pronounced /ˌɒɹɪˈɡɑːmi/.
Why “origami” is a great word
The Japanese art of folding paper into decorative shapes and figures. From Japanese 折(お)り紙(がみ) (origami), from 折(お)り (ori, "fold") + 紙(かみ) (kami, "paper"), first attested in English in 1956. Unlike kirigami, which permits the clean violence of the scissor’s cut, or the sprawling field of papercraft, which welcomes glue, pulp, and collage, origami is a discipline of pure negation, a subtractive art where the only tool is the crease. It is the crisp, geometric pleat forming a crane’s slender neck; the patient, repeated valley-fold that coaxes a flat sheet into a blooming lily; the silent, focused transformation of a perfect square into a locked complexity of wings and legs. There is something quietly devastating in this: that beauty requires no subtraction, no addition, only the rearrangement of what was already complete.
Etymology
Borrowed from Japanese 折(お)り紙(がみ) (origami), from 折(お)り (ori, “to fold”) + 紙(かみ) (kami, “paper”).
noun
- The Japanese art of paper folding.
- A piece of art made by folding paper.e.g.“The production notes are folded like the funny origamis that I made in grammar school (only I used to write boy's names inside each section).”
- The materials science technology that applies the art of origami to products.
- The materials science that studies origami applications in various material.
- The mathematics field that studies folding two-dimensional surfaces into three-dimensional structures, using folds and creases akin to those in the art of origami.
verb
- To construct by means of decorative paper folding.e.g.“He snatched my serviette and swiftly origamied a swan.”
Words closest in meaning
By meaning, not spelling — each word's AI semantic fingerprint, nearest first.
- kirigami 70% match — An art similar to origami, with cutting permitted. vs origami →
- paperfolding 70% match — The folding of paper; origami vs origami →
- aerogami 57% match — Airborne origami. vs origami →
- chiyogami 53% match — The repeating pattern found in many origami papers, originally applied with wood blocks, but now mainly using silkscreen techniques. vs origami →
- decoupage 50% match — An art technique in which paper cutouts (either from magazines etc or specially made) are glued onto the surface of an object and sometimes painted or decorated. vs origami →
- washi 48% match — A tough paper used in traditional Japanese art forms. vs origami →
- tsutsumu 48% match — The Japanese art of wrapping items in an attractive and appropriate manner. vs origami →
- scherenschnitte 46% match — An art of papercutting, cutting continuous paper designs, which began in Switzerland and Germany in the 1500s and was brought to Colonial America in the 1700s by immigrants who settled primarily in Pennsylvania. vs origami →