pasteboard

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   stiff cardboard made by pasting together layers or sheets of paper

   He shaped a false nose from pasteboard and covered it with paint.

2. 2
   adj

   made of pasteboard, or figuratively flimsy, artificial, and unconvincing

   The stage set showed a row of pasteboard houses beneath a painted sky.

A compound of paste + board, recorded from the early sixteenth century for board made by pasting sheets together. Its figurative adjective sense developed from the material's association with cheap theatrical props and imitation objects.

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