China (ceramics), if that counts.
I believe dice used to be made of bone and were called bones.
Flint (sparker in a lighter)
In many other languages, the word for a cigarette is tobacco.
‘Threads’ used to be (is?) slang for clothing.
Really? I thought U.S. nickels have always (WWII excepted) been 75% copper, 25% nickel. Has this changed recently?
Zinc sacrificial anodes on seagoing boats are often called “zincs.”
It is a fungus.
Good one. The sheets of slate permanently installed in a classroom were in my experience “blackboards” or, as you suggest, “chalkboards”; a slate was a small flat piece of slate, approximately 9"x12" in a wooden frame, portable and capable of being held in the hands, resting on a desk, etc.
Pssst. Rubber IS latex – pass it on.
at the edge, but I think inside the definition, is ‘andiron’
‘silver’ can also refer to coinage in general (as opposed to ‘paper’, so there’s another one, though you have to have the money context for that)
So here is what we have so far, removing those that I don’t think quite fit or are unusual nicknames or aren’t really manmade:
iron (1): for removing wrinkles from clothes
iron (2): a golf club
glass: for drinking
glasses: for vision correction
steel: for knife sharpening
straw: drinking liquids (now obsolete)
cloth: any object made of cloth
clothes: clothing made of cloth
silver: coins
(the) silver: tableware
flint: for striking sparks
marbles: children’s toy (now obsolete)
quill: a pen made from a quill
rubber(1): a condom
rubber(2): an eraser for pencils (or was this the other way around?)
rubbers: rain boots
plastic: credit cards
wood: a golf club
vinyl: a record
nickel: 5 cents
nylons: stockings
paper: a report, or a newspaper
cork: a bottle stopper
eiderdown: a feather quilt
linens: bed or table cloths
(the) soap: a bar of soap
stone: a gravestone
silks(1): jockey uniforms
silks(2): dainty unmentionables
leathers: protective leather clothing
carbon: carbon paper copy (now obsolete)
tin: a can sealed with tin (now obsolete)
slate: a portable chalkboard
canvas: a painting on canvas
threads: slang for clothing
zincs: maritime anodes
andiron: a fireplace log support
copper: a copper penny (now obsolete)
bronze: a statue or artwork made of bronze
Any more?
What’s your opinion on *brick * and Plastique?
Lead, in four ways: sinkers used in fishing, pencil innards (although usually made from carbon), window frames, and a thin line in typesetting.
Oh, and isn’t “copper” an old Brit word for a penny?
I suppose a case could be made for brick, but the problem is that “brick” and “plastic” are words that go back and forth between being a material and being a property of a material. Plastic originally meant moldable, and it was applied to new industrial polymers because they were moldable. But nowadays plastic refers more to the material, although we have plastic surgery and such. So plastic to refer to credit cards makes sense. But I’m unsure of the etymology of plastique. I believe the name refers to the moldable quality of the explosive, not that it is made of what we normally think of as “plastic”.
And brick. Well, you can have a brick of chocolate, a brick of compressed camel dung, a brick of ink…or, yes, a brick of, well, brick. So…you’ve talked me in to brick, although I think the word orignially refered to the lumps, then got applied to the material the lumps were made of, then back to lumps made of the material. Tricky, that.
Oh, drat, I missed “copper” in the list. Sorry. What about “crystal,” as in a watch crystal?
And by way of Latin, pipes. Lead=plumbum, so pipes made of lead were called plumbing by the Romans. But this doesn’t quite count since it is another double-reverse trick shot.
Another thought: Chewing gum. (Chiclets are a close call, but I assume you don’t want to get into trade names…)
‘copper’ is also a term for various large traditional pans (made of copper) for boiling water, making beer mash etc.
Horse brasses are ornamental brass buckles that are found on shire horse harnesses
‘timbers’ - bit of a difficult one to call this, but stay with me… ‘roof timbers’ - OK, at first glance, maybe they are just called that because they are timber, and nothing more, but hang on; I think the term almost has a life of its own, for example, if the framework of a roof was made from, say, fibreglass, I could well imagine someone describing them as ‘synthetic timbers’. Or maybe not.
I think perhaps a useful distinction would be whether the term will continue in use if the original material of manufacture is substituted;
for example: Bikers’ protective clothing will continue to be called ‘leathers’ even if it becomes most commonly manufactured of synthetics.
How 'bout resin - the kind used on the bow of a string instrument?
What I could find:
“Nickels are made out of a nickel/copper alloy (a mixture of metals), 75 percent copper and 25 percent nickel. Nickels have a smooth edge; the nickel is 21.21 mm in diameter and is 1.95 mm thick.”
Interestingly,
“Five-cent coins minted from 1942 to 1945 aren’t nickels… Why? Because they don’t have any nickel in them! During that time, the U.S. Mint used a special wartime alloy instead—copper (56%), silver (35%), and manganese (9%). That way all the saved nickel could be used in the war effort.”
I like the idea that the term is really entrenched when the item still has the material name but is no longer made of that material. So we have plastic drinking glasses, polycarbonate vision-correcting glasses, plastic straws, stainless steel silverware, stainless steel tins, electronic papers, and cotton/polyester blend bed linens.
Oh, I thought of another one for glass. Although archaic, glass can mean a mirror, a looking-glass.
They do. And they don’t refer to the synthetic stuff as “leathers” - actually, there’s rather little synthetic material that’s suited for the purpose. Pretty much any woven material other than Kevlar disintegrates after sliding about six inches along the pavement.
“Brasses” is also a term used in cabinetry for the metal bits - drawer pulls, keyhole trim, etc.
Timber - anyone who’s watched “In a Fix” or “Clean Sweep” has heard them refer to pretty much any dimensional lumber as “timba”
Reeds - as found in woodwind instruments used to be procured by slogging through the swamp and selecting reeds.