PLASTER • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Plaster

Add this Dictionary
to your website!
See more options...

/plˈæstər/ Listen

noun

Plaster n. (Formerly written also plaister)

1.

(Med.) An external application of a consistency harder than ointment, prepared for use by spreading it on linen, leather, silk, or other material. It is adhesive at the ordinary temperature of the body, and is used, according to its composition, to produce a medicinal effect, to bind parts together, etc.; as, a porous plaster; sticking plaster.

2.

A composition of lime, water, and sand, with or without hair as a bond, for coating walls, ceilings, and partitions of houses. See Mortar.

3.

Calcined gypsum, or plaster of Paris, especially when ground, as used for making ornaments, figures, moldings, etc.; or calcined gypsum used as a fertilizer.

Plaster cast, a copy of an object obtained by pouring plaster of Paris mixed with water into a mold.

Plaster of Paris. (Chem.) Anhydrous calcium sulphate, or calcined gypsum, which forms with water a paste which soon sets or hardens, and is used for casts, moldings, etc. The term is loosely applied to any plaster stone or species of gypsum.

Plaster of Paris bandage (Surg.), a bandage saturated with a paste of plaster of Paris, which on drying forms a perfectly fitting splint.

Plaster stone, any species of gypsum. See Gypsum.

verb

Plaster v. t. (past & past part. plastered; pres. part. plastering)

1.

To cover with a plaster, as a wound or sore.

2.

To overlay or cover with plaster, as the ceilings and walls of a house.

3.

Fig.: To smooth over; to cover or conceal the defects of; to hide, as with a covering of plaster.

See images of 'Plaster'

Etymology of 'Plaster'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

Share |

"Plaster" Quotes from Famous Books

... pocket some adhesive plaster, and flakes of some strong styptic, and a piece of elastic. "Now," said she to Vizard, "give me a little opening in the middle to plaster these strips across the wound." He did so. Then in a moment she passed the elastic under the sufferer's head, drew it over with the styptic between her finger ...

— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade

... Oxalis; or better, see Bibliography in "Natural History Review," No. VIII., page 419 (October, 1862) for quotation from M. Baillon on pollen-tubes finding way from anthers to stigma in Helianthemum. I should doubt gum getting solid from [i.e. because of] continued secretion. Why not sprinkle fresh plaster of Paris and make impenetrable crust? (637/1. The suggestion that the stigma should be covered with a crust of plaster of Paris, pierced by a hole to allow the pollen-tubes to enter, bears a resemblance ...

— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin

... one or other set of symptoms is prominent she gets the appropriate label, and sometimes she continues to exhibit only the single phase of nervous exhaustion or of spinal irritation. Far more often she runs the gauntlet of nerve-doctors, gynaecologists, plaster jackets, braces, water-treatment, and all the fantastic ...

— Fat and Blood - An Essay on the Treatment of Certain Forms of Neurasthenia and Hysteria • S. Weir Mitchell

... Faerie Queene, and the Orlando Furioso, of both. The terms were formerly identical, or used as such; and neither is the best that might be found. The term Imagination is too confined: often too material. It presents too invariably the idea of a solid body;—of 'images' in the sense of the plaster-cast cry about the streets. Fancy, on the other hand, while it means nothing but a spiritual image or apparition ([Greek: Phantasma], appearance, phantom), has rarely that freedom from visibility which is one of the highest privileges of imagination. Viola, in Twelfth ...

— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various

... withal. His wife took the diagnosis of his complaints and prescribed profanity. She thought he would feel better if between the paroxysms of grief and pain he would swear a little. For each boil a plaster ...

— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage

Copyright © 2024 Free Translator.org