Okay. Would you accept the UK usages of “wool” to mean any kind of yarn, i.e., thick stranded fiber used for knitting etc. even if the fiber is synthetic rather than wool, and “cotton” to mean any kind of sewing thread even if the fiber is synthetic rather than cotton?
(Personally I think “quilt” as originally derived from “a piece of quilted fabric” does actually meet your criteria, as much as “film” or “paper” or any other specifically constructed type of material does. But, your OP, your rules.)
I’m not sure why you count that only as ‘sort of’. Certainly a refill for a mechanical pencil is called ‘a lead’. If the graphite in your pencil runs out, you need to fit ‘a new lead’. If you wish to stock up on refills, you need to buy ‘a box of leads’. Lead is an object. Example.
Also, I suggested ‘a chalk’ before. Did you miss that, or do you disagree for some reason.
“A copper” in the (admittedly somewhat arcane/archaic, also pretty UK-specific) sense of a “wash house copper” or large boiler for a laundry room or hot-water system.
Originally, and preferably, made of actual copper, hence the name. But it was far more common to manufacture them of cheaper cast iron.
Would you call something “a wool”? I’ve never heard that. I’m not looking for a material that doesn’t include its namesake, so “wool” as a material/uncountable noun wouldn’t qualify.
Not at all. Consider how the object “glass” relates to the material “glass.” Exact same word for object and material.
Yes, but people don’t, and never did, pick up “a lead” made from lead. Although people once wrote with lead, and although mechanical pencils have “lead,” there was not an object called “a lead” that was made from lead, in the same way that a glass is made from glass.
In my dialect we have “a piece of chalk” or “a stick of chalk,” never “a chalk.” Looking at dictionaries, I’m not finding that as a definition.
That’s a weird and archaic one, but I suppose it works.
Would the mercury in a thermometer work? People still refer to “the mercury” when relaying a temperature even if the stuff inside isn’t made from that.
Going farther afield yet into foreign languages, I think the French “plume” (literally and originally “feather”, now primarily “pen”) is an exactly parallel instance to what you’re talking about.
Someone earlier mentioned “a rubber”, meaning a pencil eraser… but that one doesn’t actually work, because the naming went the other way around: A pencil eraser is a “rubber”, because it’s a thing that rubs, and the material “rubber” was named after that.
Here’s another valid one: A corset “bone” was originally so called because it was made from whalebone, but in modern corsetry the bones are plastic or steel.
I remember one instance where canvas is used for a digital object. In one of my jobs, I used to program in Delphi, and the object library for creating and designing graphics in your project had an object class called “canvas” that represented the virtual drawing area. Probably there are other languages and platforms where that’s the case too, but I don’t remember.
Aha. A “bristle” or filament in a brush (hairbrush, paintbrush) is called that because originally it was literally a bristle or stiff hair from an animal’s coat (e.g., boar bristle). But brush fibers are still called “bristles” even if they’re made of nylon or other synthetics. So: a nylon bristle.
Oh, and of course “a cane” as in a walking stick is nowadays most often made of something other than actual cane, meaning a dried stalk of a large grass such as rattan or bamboo.
