PLASTER OF PARIS • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Plaster of Paris

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/plˈæstər əv pˈɛrɪs/ 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.

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Etymology of 'Plaster of Paris'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Plaster of paris" Quotes from Famous Books

... this colossal statue of Vulcan was first built in clay at Passaic, N.J., where Mr. Moretti carried on the work under adverse circumstances and through the zero weather of the winter of 1903-4. It was then cast in plaster of Paris in sections, which were braced and stayed with scantling on the inside of the shell, to be used as patterns in the foundry. The entire model was shipped to Birmingham, Ala., on seven flat cars, its bulk rendering it impossible ...

— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission

... plains of Marathon? I began to trench the ground, to see what might be discovered; and the third day, sir, we found a stone, which I have transported to Monkbarns, in order to have the sculpture taken off with plaster of Paris; it bears a sacrificing vessel, and the letters A. D. L. L. which may stand, without much violence, ...

— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott

... Middle stretchers, lengthwise and crosswise, give added strength and rigidity. Upon this frame the slate bed is leveled by planing the frame wherever necessary. Slats are fastened to the bed by screws, the heads of which are countersunk so that they may be covered over even with plaster of paris. ...

— Mission Furniture - How to Make It, Part I • H. H. Windsor

... mother, incredulity swiftly followed by a frozen knowledge; she tried with her lips, her mouth, to breath life into the flesh already meaningless, lost to her. Then the tragedy of existence drew her face into a mask universal and timeless, a staring tearless shocked regard as white and inhuman as plaster of Paris. Emotion choked at Lee's throat; and, in a sense of shame at having been so shaken, he admitted that Mina Raff had an extraordinary ability: he evaded the impressive reality by a return to the trivial fact. ...

— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer

... of the refugee, startling him so much out of the perpendicular that the superstructure of plastic art came to the ground with a crash, top-dressing the sterile soil of the Campus Martius with a coat of manufactured plaster of Paris. Marius, blubbering over the shattered chimney-stacks of Carthage, could not have displayed a more touching classical spectacle than did that modern Roman lamenting to and fro among the fragments of his collapsed martyrs and ruined saints; nor were his pangs ...

— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various

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