Melamine, in this everyday sense, is a hard, smooth, plastic-like material used on tabletops and for light plates and bowls you can wipe clean. Furniture shops and kitchenware talk use it for that tough, shiny surface that is not real wood and not china. It is a bit technical but ordinary — the stuff of canteen trays and cheap white tables. Though actually the same English word is also the name of the chemical inside that resin, and that chemical became infamous in 2008 when it was mixed into milk powder and made children ill. The table material and the poison-in-the-news story are the same family of stuff, but they are not the same conversation: one is what is this table made of, and the other is a crime-and-safety story. In careful English, context tells you which.