paper

Forms

1.A sheet material typically used for writing on or printing on (or as a non-waterproof container), usually made by draining cellulose fibres from a suspension in water.
- Draw on the paper! Not on the walls!
- The paper mill on the south side of town makes various grades of paper and employs hundreds of people.
2.Ellipsis of newspaper; anything used as such (such as a newsletter or listing magazine).
- Read all about it in this morning's paper!
- In those days, the Reporter Dispatch was the paper of record around here, and everyone who was anyone took the paper [was a subscriber].
- “Anthea hasn't a notion in her head but to vamp a lot of silly mugwumps. She's set her heart on that tennis bloke[…]whom the papers are making such a fuss about.”
3.Ellipsis of wallpaper.
- The paperhangers had just finished hanging the paper in the dining room when the interior decorator walked in and exclaimed that it was the wrong color.
- There was a neat hat-and-umbrella stand, and the stranger's weary feet fell soft on a good, serviceable dark-red drugget, which matched in colour the flock-paper on the walls.
4.Ellipsis of wrapping paper.
- The kids could hardly wait to tear the paper off their Christmas gifts.
- In those days, you asked the butcher for a block of cheese, and he wrapped it up in paper for you.

1.Having a title that is merely official, or given by courtesy or convention.
2.Made of paper.
3.Insubstantial (from the weakness of common paper).
4.Planned (from plans being drawn up on paper).
- "We have to be able to demonstrate that it is not just a paper engine but a real engine" and that development work has "mitigated all the risk".
- "The Ares 1 is a paper rocket that's far off in the future," Musk said. "Falcon 9 is a real rocket, most of which is at Cape Canaveral right now."

Common· #585

From Middle English paper

From Anglo-Norman paper

From Old Catalan paper, borrowed from Latin papȳrus (and given the Catalan suffix -er)

From Ancient Greek πάπυρος (pápuros).