On Wednesday, 27 September 2017 00:16:44 UTC+1, Dave Platt wrote:
In article , rickman wrote:
tabbypurr wrote on 9/26/2017 6:31 PM:

Nothing sticks to polythene.

Are you in the UK? Is that what we call polyethylene? How does it happen
that we end up with different names for things like common plastic?

Tradition. It dates back at least as far as the day when we Americans
decided we couldn't afford to spell the new metal "aluminium" due to a
severe shortage of printers' slugs for the letter "i". :-)

Pedant mode on. Most plastics have a short common name for obvious reason. IIRC Mr. Webster's rewrite of American spelling occurred well before plastics in the 1800s.


NT