In the term plastic surgery, the adjective plastic implies sculpting or reshaping, which is derived from the Greek πλαστική (τέχνη), plastikē (tekhnē), “the art of modelling” of malleable flesh.[3] This meaning in English is attested as early as 1598.[4] The surgical definition of "plastic" first appeared in 1839, preceding the modern "engineering material made from petroleum" sense of plastic (coined by Leo Baekeland in 1909) by seventy years.
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