gutta-percha

plural gutta-perchas · alternative guttapercha · alternative gutta percha · alternative obsolete guttah

1. countableuncountableAn inelastic natural latex, produced from the sap of several tropical trees of the genera Palaquium and Payena.

   No player shall be allowed to wear projecting nails, iron plates, or gutta percha on the soles or heels of his boots.

   1863, The Football Association Laws, rule 13

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   Resin, pitch, sealing-wax, caoutchouc, sulphur, gutta-percha, and generally all bodies commonly termed resinous, besides a great variety of others, will be found to acquire, after friction, the power of attracting light bodies, and hence will be said, according to a limitation of terms already accepted, to be in an electrized or electrified state .

   1855, William Somerville Orr, Orr's Circle of the Sciences, page 205

   BRITISH CONSTRUCTION OF TELEGRAPHIC APPARATUS. R. S. Culley states that small insulators, formed of good porcelain, are the best, although, on several accounts, ebonite is recommended. Dirt and moisture are the principal things to be guarded against, but not all; for many mischievous boys, who would not take the trouble to break an unpretending black cap, can not resist the temptation of throwing at a large white one. Insects, especially spiders, are a source of peculiar annoyance. In the high roads of Ireland they are very troublesome, and in India, however large an insulator may be, an insect of the proper size is always ready to inhabit it. With respect to the construction of a line of telegraph the author states that it is preferable to use suspended rather than buried wires, because of the liability of gutta-percha and india-rubber to deteriorate underground, the expense of repairing faults, and the retardation of signals in consequence of the greater inductive capacity of wires so laid. On the other hand, gutta-percha is indestructible in sea-water, which is not, however, the case with india-rubber.

   1875, “Electricity, Light, Heat, Sound”, in Alfred E. Beach, editor, The Science Record for 1875: A Compendium of Scientific Progress and Discovery During the Past Year (Science Record), volume 4, Munn and Company, page 239

   They wandered together along the shore with a couple of old "cleeks" brought from England and some wretched gutta-percha golf balls, to be driven on their last afternoon gloriously into the sea.

   1947, Malcolm Lowry, chapter 1, in Under the Volcano, New York: Reynal & Hitchcock

   Gutta-percha is a close chemical relative of natural latex rubber, but its slightly different chemical structure causes it to be a hard, plastic-like solid even without cross-linking. This gutta-percha photo holder looks and feels like hard plastic.

   2014, Theodore Gray, photography by Nick Mann, Molecules: The Elements and the Architecture of Everything, 2018 Paperback Edition, page 109