pyrex
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 2.51 in modern English
17
Scrabble Score
5
Letters
1
Syllables
5
Unique Chars
Meaning
name
A brand of glassware produced by the Corning corporation, capable of resisting high temperatures, and suitable for cooking applications, currently made with tempered glass.
noun
A kind of heat-resistant borosilicate glass, made by mixing a high concentration of boron oxides into the molten glass to reduce its thermal expansion coefficient.
Uncountable
noun
Any glass capable of withstanding high temperatures, such as tempered glass suitable for cooking.
Uncountable
Example Sentences
- "This steel tube slips into the pyrex glass focus tube, which is jacketed by a vacuum"
- "There is half of a yesteryear's tin of baked beans in a pyrex bowl"
- "I tiptoed into the kitchen, turned on the fluorescent light over the stove, and peered into the oven. It was still warm, though the gas had been turned off. My dinner was there, in a pyrex dish with a cover."
Etymology
From pie + r + -ex. First manufactured by the Corning Glassware Factory in 1915. * 1957, Letter from the Corning Glassware Factory: *: "We had a number of prior trademarks ending in the letters ex. One of the first commercial products to be sold under the new mark was a pie plate, and in the interests of euphonism the letter "r" was inserted between pie and ex, and the whole thing condensed to pyrex." * By surface analysis, the name also suggests pyr- (“fire”) + rex (“king”), thus connoting superior performance at high temperatures; in this regard, compare also the name of a major competing brand, Fire-King.