ˈplastically, adv.
[f. as prec. + -ly2: see -ically.]
In a plastic manner, in various senses of the adj.; according to plastic art; by moulding or modelling; as a plastic substance.
| 1835 Southern Lit. Messenger Dec. 43/2 Pictorially, or graphically, or as a German would say plastically. 1840 Fraser's Mag. XXII. 149 Thou..hast not always had materials for thy prodigious brain to wield and plastically build up. 1856 De Quincey Confess. Wks. V. 42 The command over a language, the power of adapting it plastically to the expression of your own thoughts, is almost exclusively a gift of nature. 1876 Symonds Grk. Poets Ser. ii. xi. 358 Both persons and situations are plastically treated—subjected, that is to say, to the conditions best fulfilled by sculpture. 1886 ― Renaiss. It., Cath. React. (1898) VII. xiv. 237 Humanity moves like a glacier, plastically. 1957 G. E. Hutchinson Treat. Limnol. I. vii. 532 A slow fall in temperature apparently permits the ice to flow plastically over the lake surface without cracking. 1966 C. R. Tottle Sci. Engin. Materials vii. 158 Many materials show only a very short elastic range and begin to deform plastically at comparatively low stresses. 1972 J. G. Dennis Structural Geol. vi. 109 ‘Brittle’ rocks could yield plastically. |