Talk:plastic

Um, I thought inelastic was the antonym of elastic? --Connel MacKenzie 06:59, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

This page also needs to consider the meaning of Plastic used in the arts and in art criticism.

Plastic as "moldable"

Plastic as "subject to human will"

Chris.rider 17:46, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Malleable substance
This meaning is described as archaic but it is still very current in the field of materials science and is often opposed to "elastic". Since the entry gives "elastic" as an antonym, it is quietly recognising this in any case. Spinningspark 22:16, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

RFV discussion: August–September 2018
Rfv-sense: "snobbish".

Formerly included in the immediately preceding definition, which is now "fake". The cahracteristics fake and snobbish may often co-occur in the world but they do not mean the same thing. I moved the  citation from the preceding definition because it was the only one that was not unambiguously for the definition "fake". It is, however, actually of plastics, which would make it for one of the existing noun definitions. DCDuring (talk) 18:10, 4 August 2018 (UTC)


 * I have added some cites, but I am not completely sure about them. Kiwima (talk) 03:53, 6 August 2018 (UTC)
 * To me none of them seem unambiguous. And Plastic snob would be a pleonasm if plastic meant "snobbish". DCDuring (talk) 04:49, 6 August 2018 (UTC)

RFV-failed Kiwima (talk) 21:39, 4 September 2018 (UTC)

What sense is this? -- "plastic scenery"
It can't refer to the modern material called plastic, because that didn't exist at the time being discussed. Nor the "fake, ersatz" sense, which derives from the cheapness and light weight of the modern material. "Deformable" doesn't seem relevant either.


 * 1826, Abraham John Valpy, ‎Edmund Henry Barker, The Classical Journal (volume 33, page 85)
 * Immediately behind the Logeion, lay the Proskenion, or proper stage, which, having often heavy plastic scenery to support, was made of stone.

Green's Newspeak (1984) says that the word "plastic" can refer to theatrical scenery that is three-dimensional (as opposed to flats), so that might be it. We lack that sense. Equinox ◑ 21:04, 8 June 2022 (UTC)