ornaments

[meliss]

Hi, do you have any suggestions about what could they be these "ornaments"? Otto's family is very poor, so they couldn't be pieces of jewellery.
"Otto, in the inner room with the door open, was amusing himself by balancing ornaments on the turntable of an old gramophone, which was now minus sound-box and tone-arm, to see how long it would be before they flew off and smashed." (The Nowaks, Christopher Isherwood)

 

[GoesStation]

An "ornament" is any decorative item. Although jewelry (American spelling) is ornamental, it's not something I'd think of if I saw the word.

Does the scene take place in the Christmas season? Many Christmas-tree ornaments are made of thin glass that smashes easily.

 

[meliss]

Does the scene take place in the Christmas season? Many Christmas-tree ornaments are made of thin glass that smashes easily.

No, it's an ordinary Sunday in autumn.

 

[jutfrank]

Perhaps you could do an image search with your favourite search engine to get an idea of the multitude of objects that the word ornament can cover.

 

[emsr2d2]

Hi. Do you have any suggestions about what [STRIKE]could they be[/STRIKE] these "ornaments" could be?

Note my corrections above.

 

[meliss]

Perhaps you could do an image search with your favourite search engine to get an idea of the multitude of objects that the word ornament can cover.

Considering the quantity and the variety of options it hardly could help.

 

[emsr2d2]

Ornaments are usually decorative things that we have in our home on shelves, on the mantelpiece etc. They are things like china dolls, mementos from holidays, little glass animals. The fact that you found so many things online is indicative of just how many things the word can cover. You'll just have to use your imagination. The only thing we can assume is that the ornaments Otto chose were small enough to balance on the gramophone.