plastic
Pluralplastics
Pluralplastics
- 1A synthetic, solid material made from hydrocarbon-based polymers, able to be molded into lasting shapes.
The factory molds plastic into containers of every size.
Unlike metal, plastic can be shaped easily when heated.
Similarpolymer
Note
Named for what it does rather than what it is: the word goes back through Latin plasticus to Greek plássō, "to mold, form." The material comes in two families that behave differently under heat. Thermoplastics soften and can be reshaped again; thermosetting plastics set once for good. As a mass noun it names the stuff itself (plastic waste); in the plural it names kinds of material: plastics, shampoos, cosmetics.
- 2Constructed or formed from plastic rather than another material.
The museum displayed plastic replicas of the fragile artifacts.
He prefers plastic plates for outdoor parties because they don't break.
Note
The everyday adjective, placed before a noun to say what a thing is made of: a plastic wardrobe, a green plastic watering can. Plastic so often imitates other materials that the literal word slides easily toward the "not the real thing" sense. Radiohead's "Fake Plastic Trees" (1995) sets fake and plastic side by side and lets both meanings sound at once.
- 3Credit and debit cards, thought of as a way of paying instead of cash.
The restaurant doesn't take plastic, only cash.
Tourists rely on plastic when traveling abroad.
Oppositecash
Note
A metonym: the card's material stands for the credit it carries. It behaves mostly as a mass noun, usually without an article, so a shop takes plastic, you pay with plastic, and Lily Allen sings of carrying it in "The Fear" (2008). The register is colloquial. It is at home in speech and song lyrics but out of place on a formal invoice or contract.
- 4Capable of being molded or shaped; soft, flexible, and easily bent without breaking.
Heated glass becomes plastic enough to blow into delicate shapes.
The sculptor preferred a plastic material that held every fingerprint.
Similarflexible, malleable, pliant, moldable, ductile
Oppositerigid, brittle, inflexible, stiff
Note
The physical meaning closest to the Greek root: yielding to pressure and keeping the shape. Its opposite is elastic, not rigid. An elastic thing springs back, while a plastic one stays as pressed, like the beach in Norman Lindsay's Age of Consent (1938) that takes "a clear imprint" of tracks. Thomas Keightley's "plastic powers of fiction" (1828) shows the word already stretching to the imagination.
- 5Fake and insincere, especially in a shallow, conformist way that puts on a smooth, glossy show of flawlessness.
The talk show host gave a plastic grin to every guest.
He found the influencer's plastic enthusiasm exhausting.
Note
The counterculture's word for glossy conformity. Frank Zappa's "Plastic People" (1967) and a 1971 line by Gil Scott-Heron that applies it to people and their thinking alike both use it as an accusation. Eric Berne (1973) recalls the Flower Children dividing the world into "real people and plastic people." It describes people and their manner, as in a plastic smile, and its opposites are genuine and sincere.
- 6Inferior or fake; not the genuine article.
The remake felt plastic next to the gritty original.
Reviewers called the resort a plastic version of a real fishing village.
Similarfake, artificial, phony, sham, ersatz
Oppositegenuine, authentic, real
Note
Aimed at things, scenes and styles rather than at character: a plastic music scene, plastic pop. The word is derogatory, and its closest synonym is ersatz. Lowell Streiker's list in The Gospel of Irreligious Religion (1969), "the pseudo-Hippie, the plastic Hippie, the weekend Hippie," shows the company it keeps: words for the counterfeit version of something that claims to be authentic.
- 7Relating to the permanent, non-brittle deformation of a material: the kind that does not spring back or shatter.
Beyond the elastic limit, the beam entered a plastic regime and held its bent shape.
Engineers test how much load triggers plastic deformation in the steel frame.
Oppositeelastic
Note
The technical sense is defined by what it is not. Under load, a material first deforms elastically and springs back. Past its elastic limit, plastic deformation sets in and the change is permanent. A brittle material skips that stage and simply breaks. A bent paperclip has deformed plastically, while a snapped glass rod never did.
- 8An instance of plastic surgery; a single cosmetic operation.
The clinic offers a discount on your second plastic.
Several celebrities admitted to having a plastic or two.
Similarprocedure, operation, surgery
Note
Slang made by clipping: plastic surgery drops its second word, and what remains becomes a count noun. You have a plastic done, as in Arnold Hano's The Big Out (1951), where someone has "had a plastic done on his nose." Outside casual talk, say plastic surgery or name the procedure itself.
- 9Insincerity or fakeness; also a fake, arrogant, or narcissistic person who believes they are better than everybody else.
The new manager was all plastic, full of empty charm.
Those plastics in the front row only care about looking important.
Note
Slang that turns a quality into a label. In Mean Girls (2004), Janis tells Cady, "You're plastic. Cold, shiny, hard plastic." The material's gloss and hardness do the insulting. The noun can name the fakeness itself (a town full of plastic) or the people who embody it. For the same idea as a describing word, see the "insincere" adjective.
- 10Capable of changing to suit varying conditions; marked by adaptability to one's environment.
Many species are remarkably plastic, adjusting their behavior when moved to new habitats.
The developing nervous system remains highly plastic during early childhood.
Similaradaptable, flexible, malleable, adaptive
Oppositerigid, fixed, inflexible
Note
Biologists apply it to organisms, traits and tissues that change in response to their surroundings. A plastic species shifts its behavior or development when conditions change, and a young nervous system stays plastic as it grows. The point is responsiveness within one organism's life, without any change in the underlying genes. Here the word is a neutral or even approving one, the opposite of fixed.
- 11Creative; possessing the power to form or shape things into being.
The poets praised the plastic energy of the natural world.
See plastic Nature working to this end.
1733, [Alexander Pope], An Essay on Man.Similarcreative, formative, generative
Note
At home in eighteenth-century verse, it names the power that shapes things into being. Matthew Prior asks the Creator to let "thy plastic hand" dispose its work (1718). Alexander Pope's Essay on Man (1733) has "plastic Nature working to this end." Today it reads as dated and poetic. In modern prose, creative or formative carries the idea without the period flavor.
- 12Any solid yet malleable substance that can be molded and holds the shape given to it.
The craftsman pressed the heated plastic into an ornate mold.
Softened over the flame, the resin became a plastic that retained its new form.
Note
An archaic, wider use of the noun: anything solid that yields to shaping and then keeps the shape. The synthetic polymer has since narrowed the word to manufactured materials. A reader who meets "a plastic" in older writing should therefore not assume it was anything synthetic.
- 13Producing or forming new tissue, as in the material that gathers during the healing of a wound.
The physician described the plastic exudate that sealed the injury.
A plastic lymph collected over the wound as it began to heal.
Note
Older medical language, now rare: it described whatever builds new tissue, especially during healing. Physicians wrote of plastic lymph or plastic exudate, the material that gathers over a wound and was thought to organize into fresh flesh. Readers today will meet it mainly in historical medical writing. It is unrelated to the cosmetic operation, despite the shared word.
- 14Of a bird, having escaped from captivity rather than occurring naturally in the wild.
The records committee rejected the sighting, judging the duck to be plastic.
Experienced observers suspected the parakeet was plastic rather than a genuine vagrant.
Oppositewild
Note
Birders' informal word for an escape: a bird that got loose from captivity rather than arriving on its own. The label matters because such a bird does not count as a wild record. With a surprising rarity, the first question is often whether it is plastic. Ian Reid's 2024 report of a Baikal Teal stresses that it was "apparently wild, not plastic."
- 15Of a bird, present because it was introduced by people rather than being native or a natural vagrant.
The committee classed the parakeet flocks as plastic, descended from introduced stock.
Many urban populations are plastic, established from deliberate or accidental human introductions.
Similarintroduced, feral, exotic
Oppositenative, indigenous
Note
The same birders' word as the "escaped bird" sense, widened from a single runaway to whole introduced populations. The status is local. Corwin Caelin hears a Red-whiskered Bulbul outside his Queensland motel and calls it "a Queensland plastic rarity." He finds it amusing that an introduced bird should count as a rarity at all.
- 16A person regarded as inauthentically Irish, claiming or performing Irishness despite a distant or tenuous connection to Ireland.
The regulars wrote him off as a plastic the moment he butchered the Gaelic toast.
She bristled at being branded a plastic, though her grandparents had left Cork decades earlier.
Note
A slang clipping of Plastic Paddy, aimed at someone whose Irishness is judged to be put on. The plastic here is the fakeness of the "fake person" sense, narrowed to a single identity. Others apply it to a person, so it works as a charge rather than a neutral description. Use it knowingly or not at all.
- 17An artist who shapes or models figures from clay, wax, stone, or similar material; a sculptor.
The cathedral commissioned a renowned plastic to model its statues.
As a plastic, she worked the clay into lifelike busts of the nobility.
Note
An obsolete noun for the maker rather than the material: the one who molds, close to the Greek idea of shaping. Readers now meet it only in older texts, where it can mislead them, because a plastic today means a substance. In modern writing, use sculptor or modeler instead.
Showing meanings only.
Practice
Can you tell the meanings of plastic apart? Answer 3 quick questions from this page, or write your own sentence and AI will check it.
Origin
From Latin plasticus ("of molding"), from Ancient Greek plastikós, from plássō ("to mold, form"). It is a doublet of plastique.