Word.ws English Dictionary

epergne

UK/ɪˈpɜːn/US/iˈpɝn/

epergne noun: a table centerpiece, usually made of silver, generally consisting of a central bowl with radiating dishes or holders.

epergne: a table centerpiece, usually made of silver, generally consisting of a central bowl with radiating...
Image: Daderot, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

epergne (plural epergnes)

  1. A table centerpiece, usually made of silver, generally consisting of a central bowl with radiating dishes or holders.
    • […] his precious helpmate sat grinning at the mischief she had occasioned, like an idiot, asking Colonel Lamborn to help her to some of them there thingumbobs out of the silver what-d’ye-call’um. These thingumbobs happened to be no other than a service of West India sweetmeats in a superb fillagree...1810, [anonymous] […], chapter XXVIII, in Splendid Follies. A Novel, […]. Founded on Facts., volume III, London: […] J[ames] F[letcher] Hughes, […], →OCLC, page 129
    • But I did like a lot of her things—the vase in the middle of the dining-room table for instance. Helen called it Mama's “epergne”. It was a two-storey thing of glass and silver and was always full of choice flowers, pure white geraniums that one longed to stroke and kiss to see if they were real...1942, Emily Carr, “Mrs. Crane”, in The Book of Small, Toronto, Ont.: Oxford University Press, →OCLC

Forms of epergne

pluralepergnes
alternative formépergne

Origin of epergne

Uncertain; perhaps from French épargne (“savings, treasury”), though it is unclear how the new meaning would have been acquired. Perhaps owing to the typical appearance of an épergne as resembling a balance upon which market goods or coins could be weighed.

Questions about epergne

What does epergne mean?
Epergne means a table centerpiece, usually made of silver, generally consisting of a central bowl with radiating dishes or holders.
What part of speech is epergne?
Epergne is a noun.
How do you pronounce epergne?
Epergne is pronounced /iˈpɝn/ (US).
What is the plural of epergne?
The plural of epergne is epergnes.

Words near epergne in the dictionary

  1. epenthetic
  2. epenthetical
  3. epenthetically
  4. epeolatry
  5. eperezolid
  6. epergne
  7. epergnes
  8. eperisone
  9. eperlan
  10. eperlans
  11. epermeniid

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: epergne (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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