As we all know, one of the most important components of today's refractories is the so-called amorphous refractories. Because of its advantages over shaped refractory products in production, labor productivity, energy saving, construction efficiency, applicability, safety in use, material consumption and other aspects, it has been developed rapidly in the world. Its proportion in the whole refractory has become an important symbol to measure the development level of refractory industry. Therefore, in recent years, the word "amorphous refractory" has been used frequently.

Unshaped refractory is a mixture of refractory aggregate, powder, binder and admixture in a certain proportion. It can be directly used in bulk delivery state without firing, or after adding appropriate liquid (water in most cases) for wet mixing. In order to be different from the refractory products with fixed shape after molding, firing (or heat treatment) by certain methods, it is specially called "amorphous refractory", also known as bulk material. However, in many Chinese enterprise product manuals, factory names, personal business cards, publicity materials, websites and even published articles, the use of "unshaped refractory" is common.

"Shape" and "type" have the same pronunciation, but their connotations are quite different. It may be due to the influence of the phrases of "stereotype" and "shaping". If you want to express the opposite meaning, that is, you don't need to be shaped, so you will be "indefinite". It is not difficult to understand the word "shape" in "molding" and "shaping". The emphasis on surface refers to the model, type, specification and model, and "shape" is implied in it. For the amorphous refractories, the "shape" can still be the "shape". For example, from the angle of "shape", it is also advisable to call it "shaped refractory" in order to distinguish it from amorphous refractory. In a word, it is advisable to use shaped refractories or shaped refractories without causing misunderstanding. However, the use of "unshaped refractory" is not clear.

Unshaped refractories (ies) or monolithic refractories (ies) are the corresponding English words for amorphous refractories. The author's impression is that the former is popular in Japan and China, while the latter is popular in European and American countries. The word monolithic comes from monolith. In this paper, monolithic fracture (ies) is used to express and emphasize that there is no joint but integrity after construction. In recent years, monolithic (s) has even been nominalized in the world to directly express the amorphous refractory, just as castable (s) stands for castable. It is self-evident that unshaped is translated as "amorphous". However, to translate monolithic into "amorphous" is to translate. As more and more refractory castables are made into prefabricated parts, the trend of setting refractory materials appears. We think that it is better to translate monolithic refractories (ies) into "monolithic refractories".