Origami: Two Japanese Words Glued Together

What Does Origami Mean?

Origami is the art of folding paper into shapes, such as a crane, a boat, a frog or a box. A sheet of paper, some careful folds and no glue is the classic way to do it.

🔊 Pronunciation

or-i-GAH-mee

The stress is on the third part, GAH. The g is hard, like the g in game.

🗣️ Natural Examples

Mia learned to fold an origami crane after school.
Our art club made origami boats and floated them in a bowl.
The teacher showed us how to make an origami frog that jumps.
This origami paper has a different colour on each side.

How to Use It

Origami is mostly used as an uncountable noun for the art: do origami, learn origami, a book about origami. It also works before another noun, as in an origami crane or origami paper.

Common Word Partners

• an origami crane, an origami boat
• origami paper
• fold origami, learn origami, do origami
• an origami club, an origami class

Similar and Related Words

• Paper folding is the plain English phrase, and it means the same thing.
• Papercraft is a wider word for crafts made from paper, such as cutting, gluing and folding.
• Kirigami is a related Japanese word for cutting paper. Kiri means cut. It is not the same as origami, which is folding only.

Common Mistakes

Stress.
❌ OR-i-gah-mee
✅ or-i-GAH-mee

Spelling. The word ends in -ami, not -amy.
❌ origamy
✅ origami

In a Conversation

Sam: Can you teach me origami?
Mia: Yes. First you need a square of paper.
Sam: I have a sandwich bag.
Mia: That is not paper. Try again.

Where Does It Come From?

Origami is a Japanese word made of two parts:

• ori means "fold"
• kami means "paper"

When the two parts join, kami appears as -gami, so the K turns into a G. English borrowed the whole word, and it is first recorded in English about 1920 to 1925.

💡 The OddLingo Trick

Break it into two: ori + gami = fold + paper. If you remember that the paper part is gami inside the word and kami on its own, you have the whole word.