carton-pierre

carton-pierre

English

Etymology

Borrowed from French carton-pierre (literally “stone cardboard”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /kɑː(ɹ)ˌtɒn piˈɛə(ɹ)/

Noun

carton-pierre (uncountable)

1. Papier-mâché that has been made to resemble wood, stone, or metal, used as decoration.
   • 1848 November – 1850 December, William Makepeace Thackeray, chapter 38, in The History of Pendennis. […], volume (please specify |volume=I or II), London: Bradbury and Evans, […], published 1849–1850, OCLC 2057953:

     There were, indeed, high-backed Dutch chairs of the seventeenth century; there was a sculptured carved buffet of the sixteenth; there was a sideboard robbed out of the carved work of a church in the Low Countries, and a large brass cathedral lamp over the round oak table; there were old family portraits from Wardour Street and tapestry from France, bits of armour, double-handed swords and battle-axes made of carton-pierre, looking-glasses, statuettes of saints, and Dresden china—nothing, in a word, could be chaster.

   • 1892, Henry James, The Lesson of the Master:

     “ […] Your talent is so great that it is in everything you do, in what's less good as well as in what's best. You've some forty volumes to show for it—forty volumes of life, of observation, of magnificent ability.”
     “I'm very clever, of course I know that,” St. George replied, quietly. “Lord, what rot they'd all be if I hadn't been! I'm a successful charlatan—I've been able to pass off my system. But do you know what it is? It's carton-pierre.”

Translations

papier-mâché made to resemble wood, stone, or metal

Catalan: cartó pedra m French: carton-pierre (fr) m Portuguese: cartão-pedra m Spanish: cartón piedra m

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French

Etymology

Literally, “stone cardboard”.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /kaʁ.tɔ̃.pjɛʁ/
• Rhymes: -jɛʁ

Noun

carton-pierre m (uncountable)

1. carton-pierre (papier-mâché made to resemble wood, stone, or metal)

Hypernyms

• papier mâché

Further reading

• “carton-pierre”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.