Would ‘hairline’ count? Referring to the fine line usually etched on a piece of glass on a measuring instrument or something similar. Only works if hairlines were once literally stretched hairs but I don’t know if that was ever the case.
OED: “late Middle English (originally denoting a person dealing in and working with lead): from Old French plommier , from Latin plumbarius , from plumbum ‘lead’.
Damn, I made it almost to the end of the thread to say, “straws”. And on a cool factor, I saw stainless steel straws at Walmart the other day. The first thing I thought was, “Wow, a great source for thin stainless tubes for fabrication.”
Might be a British English thing, but I have card in my house right now, for use by children making homemade birthday cards.
Nope. “Hairline” isn’t made of hairline. To count, the object and the material must be identical namesakes.
I know the etymology. That’s not relevant.
That’s interesting. I didn’t think “card” counted, but if it’s a material, then I suppose it does.
A borderline one - sandpaper is still made from paper, but not from sand - synthetic minerals are nowadays preferred.
steel wool aka an SOS pad ?
I believe that would fit. BTW, Silver, aka Ag, element 47, is definitely an object, not just an adjective.
Nope–“a sandpaper” isn’t an object, and it’s not an exact namesake.
Nope – “a steel wool” isn’t an object, and it’s not an exact namesake for the material, and it was never made from wool anyway.
Nope–Silver is not a counting noun, except when it’s short for “silver medal.” If it becomes common to talk about “winning a silver,” when the award is not made from silver, it’d qualify.
Interesting. I couldn’t come up with a reference to it but I felt like it must have been done. ‘Card’ apparently evolved from a word for a papyrus leaf, and later applied to paper. I was sure heavy paper like that, called cardstock here, must have been simply called ‘card’ sometimes. Maybe over here too informally because the Mercan langjh leaves out as many unnesry sylbles as possble.
A plastic cork!
This is harder than it feels it should be.
Cork is a great one!
I know I’m being super finicky about what I count–but goddammit, it’s my pointless question, so I’m allowed to be. 
I think games like this are more interesting if the rules are strict, because otherwise people just start toking up and free associating. A small list of things that exactly work is better than a large list of vaguely related words.
So far, the ones that I think work perfectly are:
- A glass
- A paper
- A cork
- A marble
- A tin
- A film
- A tape
- A sponge
- A horn
- A fleece
Ones that sort of work include
- A lead
- A straw (I think that works, although I can’t quite find the etymology, i.e., whether “straw” was named for the material it was made from, or for its similarity to the plant)
- A marshmallow
- An iron
- The ivories
- A pigskin
- A silver (medal)
- A chamois
- A fur
- A plaster (maybe? Were they named that because they contained plaster, or do they have a common ancestor with plaster?)
- A card (iffy, because it may be that the material was named for the object, not vice versa)
“Cork”, good one! It’s not just the relatively new plastic corks used for wine bottles, many bottle stoppers made of other materials have been called ‘corks’ as long as I can remember and I’m sure longer than that.
I think you can also include ‘a wood’ and ‘an iron’ in the context of golf clubs.
Did anyone find a cite that a ‘chamois’ cloth was ever made from the skin of a ‘chamois’. What I found was that the cloth was named for it’s resemblance to chamois skin, not made out of it.
I think ‘fur’ is fine. Fake fur coats, stoles, etc. are called furs all the time. No one goes to the coat check counter and asks for the their ‘fake fur’. ‘Fake’ isn’t mentioned at all except in the context of ‘real furs are bad’.
I nominate “a quilt”, which since at least the 16th century has been used to mean “a bedcover made by stitching together [quilting] two layers of fabric”, possibly enclosing some insulation/padding, often incorporating patchwork construction or applique or other embellishment techniques.
Nowadays the term is also sometimes used for a knitted or crocheted bedcover with a design that mimics the look of traditional patchwork quilts, even if it involves no quilting (or other traditional quilt construction techniques) whatsoever.
Oh, how about “bulb”? Originally meaning a swelling tuberous root, such as a tulip bulb or onion bulb, but now more commonly the secondary meaning of “bulb-like swelling in a glass tube”, such as light bulb, thermometer bulb.
I’m not looking for words that have changed meanings, or items made from different materials. “A quilt” is not named for the material “quilt” from which it’s made. Nor is “a bulb” named for the material “bulb” from which it’s made.
Maybe. I just don’t know golf well enough. But if folks commonly say, “Hand me a wood,” meaning something made of plastic, or “Hand me an iron,” meaning something made of aluminum, then those would count.
Again, maybe. I’ve never heard IRL or in media anyone refer to “a fur” when they meant something not made of fur; but that might be something that happens, just not in my experience.
Also, I wonder about pigskin. It looks like footballs were originally made from pig bladders, and around these parts, we don’t talk about a bladder being skin. So a pigskin was never made from pigskin. I cry foul.