celluloid

Noun

celluloid (countable and uncountable, plural celluloids)

1. Any of a variety of thermoplastics created from nitrocellulose and camphor, once used as photographic film.
   • Then followed some experiments with drums, over which sheets of sensitized celluloid film were drawn, the edges being pressed into a narrow slot in the surface, similar in construction to the old tin-foil phonograph.1894 June, Antonia Dickson, W. K. L. Dickson, Edison's Invention of the Kineto-Phonograph: Account of the Invention, article in Century Magazine, Volume 48, Issue 2
   • "And will you now, sir, take off your celluloid collar and permit me to burn it in the candle? Thank you, sir. And will you allow me to smash your spectacles for you with my hammer? Thank you."1910, Stephen Leacock, “The Conjurer's Revenge”, in Literary Lapses
2. (attributive, figuratively, often) The genre of cinema; film.
   • Celluloid railway comedy was hardly to appear again until the mid-thirties and, later, in Britain.1958 February, David Gunston, “Railways on the Screen”, in Railway Magazine, page 88
   • In particular, they set Kerouac and Ginsberg to the specifications of an emergent superficial form—celluloid antiheroes—attractive to those in want of adventure and who would soon be reading On the Road (1957).2004, Preston Whaley, Blows Like a Horn, page 20
3. (obsolete) An item, such as a jacket, made from celluloid.
   • 'What with that bearded Assyrian bull in London, and this Thug down here, who has ruined my clean celluloid, you seem to be keeping queer company, Ted Malone.'1929, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, When the World Screamed