インク

Meaning in English

ink

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Word context

What it means

インク (inku) means the Japanese katakana noun for 'ink'. It is the term used to name the colored liquid or pigment product recognized as ink in everyday speech and commerce.

Main meanings

As a commercial category: consumer inks sold for pens, fountain pens, and printer cartridges, identified by color and formulation.
As an industrial/technical category: specialized printing inks for offset, gravure, flexography or packaging, defined by viscosity and pigment type.
As artistic and cosmetic materials: formulations used in drawing, painting, and tattooing with distinct pigment or dye chemistries.
As a product component: the replaceable fluid inside cartridges, bottles, or ink pads that determines color and permanence.

How to use it

Used broadly in retail, manufacturing, and everyday conversation; appears on product labels, packaging, and tech support for printers and pens. The word functions as an ordinary noun in casual and formal registers — from stationery shops to factory specifications — and is combined with other terms to name cartridge types, colors, or printing processes.

Variants and close terms

墨 (sumi) — traditional Japanese/Chinese ink, solid or liquid, used for calligraphy and sumi-e painting.
インキ (inki) — older or variant katakana form historically used in printing contexts.
墨汁 (bokujū) — bottled liquid sumi ink used for brush calligraphy.

Etymology

インク (inku) is a direct loan from English ink; Japanese phonology adds a final vowel to accommodate the consonant ending, producing the katakana rendering. A historical variant インキ (inki) appears in older industry and print terminology before standardization to インク (inku).

Origin

Modern liquid inks and industrial printing formulas entered Japan with Western printing technology in the late Edo and Meiji periods; commercial mass-produced bottled inks and later cartridge systems became common as printing, publishing, and office technology industrialized in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Word class

noun (名詞)