Scratching My Head

Hi All, Once a week I always pop into the charity shops looking for gardening books that seem interesting.Latest purchase was Britain`s Favorite Plants by RHS ,almost new for £1.
On the inside cover it has a quote:-

Take thy plastic spade,
It is thy pencil; take thy seeds, thy plants,
They are colours,

William Mason,The English Garden,1782

Now I have looked it up and the first man made plastic on display was in 1862 so how come William Mason is talking about plastic in 1782.I have looked up the quote and it is genuine.

Any one with a better brain than me can explain this please I have got to be missing something obvious ,and I cannot blame "too much sun" or even booze for that matter.

 

The word was about before man made plastics, it just got applied to the product. A bit like the word mobile, we now just think of that to mean a phone.

Plastic meant flexible or mouldable, we still use that term for mortar repairs to stone, some times called plastic repairs.

And the layers of the crust that are hot and under pressure are referred to as plastic.

No idea why he's applying the word to a spade though

 

Unless he means portable?

 

What an interesting topic!

 

I knew someone would suss it out I should of looked the first use of the word "plastic" and it was the 1600`s!!! But as you say Zigs why apply it to a spade??

 

Hi Trogre, great post!

This is what the holiest of the holy, Google, says.
http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2010/09/where-the-word-plastic-came-from/

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=plastic

What I still don't get is that why would a spade be described as "shapeable or moldable"... I'd think the spade has to be rigid and used as a tool to shape or mold something, such as the soil. So the garden should be plastic, not the spade.

I guess that Mr Mason liked words better than the actual gardening work and took some liberties. Well, taking into account that Shakespeare invented a new word whenever he needed a good rhyme, let's forgive Mr Mason.

Another contribution from the big G : http://www.shakespeare-online.com/biography/wordsinvented.html

(OK, I confess- it was Selleri Junior (11) who told me about the liberties Shakespeare took with the language The glory is all hers )

My charity shop is great with gardening books as well, and cooking books. I have a treasure "Seasonal cook book" from 70s which makes brilliant reading and mental trips to childhood...

 

Just made me think, what if you could go back to the 1970s & tell folk that by 2010 everyone will be carrying a mobile around

They'd think you were mad.

Anyone else remember what a mobile was in the 70s?

 

Yup,
a decorative thing hanging from the ceiling with bits moving around in the draft.

(Draft, as in movement of air inside a dwelling, not as in "save as a draft?" in Outlook. )

I feel a long, Muppetshowy topic approaching...

 

Something you hung above a baby's cot?

 

Just checked the flight log on the GC Time travelling helicopter, it was booked out by someone to 1782 and there is a plastic trowel missing from the office tool chest

 

Will Mason nicked it

 

It was Armandi his plane lost a wing.