Science & TechnologyGreek → English
Plastic
/ˈplæstɪk/noun
A synthetic material soft enough to be shaped and hard enough to hold the shape afterwards.
The Greek roots
πλαστικός
plastikós
fit for moulding
Literally: “able to be moulded”
Follow a root:πλαστικός2 words
The story of the word
For three centuries plastic was only an adjective, said of clay, wax, and anything a hand could work. Surgeons still use it that way: plastic surgery remakes tissue and has nothing to do with polymer. The noun arrived with Leo Baekeland's Bakelite around 1909, the first fully synthetic resin, and it swallowed the adjective whole.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → French → English
- First recorded
- 17th century
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
plasterplasmaprotoplasmplasticine
In a sentence
Everything in the drawer was plastic, down to the fake wooden handle.
The industry produced more plastic in the last twenty years than in the whole century before.