ランプ

Dutch lamp and English lamp are both plausible source forms for Japanese ランプ. European lamp goes back through Latin lampas to Greek lampas, a torch. In Japan, Dutch contact at Nagasaki supplied earlier European vocabulary, while English became stronger after the ports opened in 1859. This double route explains why dictionaries often list Dutch and English together for ランプ. The word spread with modern lighting in the Meiji period, 1868-1912. Before electric service, 石油ランプ was the household term for a kerosene lamp. Electric lighting displays in Ginza in 1882, and words such as 電灯, ガス灯, ランタン, and ランプ came to mark different lighting devices. ランプ also shifted from flame equipment to lamp-shaped parts and signal lights in machines. In present Japanese, ランプ can mean a kerosene or camping lamp, a car headlamp, or an indicator light on a machine. English lamp is very broad and can be the normal word for a table light, but Japanese often says 照明, 電気スタンド, or ライト in those settings. The word also appears in compounds such as ヘッドランプ and パイロットランプ. Example: 警告ランプが点いた means a warning indicator came on.