A ceramic is any of the various hard, brittle,
heat-resistant and corrosion-resistant materials made by shaping and
then firing an inorganic, nonmetallic material, such as clay, at a high
temperature. Common examples are earthenware, porcelain, and brick.
The earliest ceramics made by humans were pottery objects (pots or
vessels) or figurines made from clay, either by itself or mixed with
other materials like silica, hardened and sintered in fire. Later,
ceramics were glazed and fired to create smooth, colored surfaces,
decreasing porosity through the use of glassy, amorphous ceramic
coatings on top of the crystalline ceramic substrates. Ceramics now
include domestic, industrial and building products, as well as a wide
range of materials developed for use in advanced ceramic engineering,
such as in semiconductors.
The word "ceramic" comes from the Greek word κεραμικός (keramikos), "of
pottery" or "for pottery", from κέραμος (keramos), "potter's clay, tile,
pottery". The earliest known mention of the root "ceram-" is the
Mycenaean Greek ke-ra-me-we, workers of ceramic written in Linear B
syllabic script. The word ceramic can be used as an adjective to
describe a material, product or process, or it may be used as a noun,
either singular, or more commonly, as the plural noun "ceramics".