shellac

It took the combination of shellac discs, electronic amplification and an automatic record-changer for National Automatic Music Company to manufacture the first 20-song multiplay machines in 1927.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Feb. 14, 2026

Human societies have used plastics that occur naturally in the environment for hundreds of years, in the form of rubber, horn and shellac.

From BBC ● Aug. 5, 2025

Instead, “People getting ready to do things” is spelled out in egg yolk, besmirching the virginal purity of its white satin support; and “It’s only vanishing cream” is translucent shellac disappearing against deathly black.

From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 7, 2024

For a decade, he lived rent-free in a warehouse crammed with 20 artists, the smell of paint and shellac commingling with fumes from plastic melted by a businessman making toys.

From New York Times ● Sep. 22, 2022

Outside’s been dunked in a bucket of shiny clear shellac.

From "The Help" by Kathryn Stockett

Ms. Zacarías shellacs a thin veneer of seriousness on the play by having the actors intone into microphones various statistics vaguely pertaining to the plotline.

From New York Times ● Oct. 7, 2015

Sculptor Fingesten works chiefly in concrete and stucco, gets his variety of texture and color by mixing pigments into the wet cement or plaster, coating some figures with beeswax, finishing others with shellacs and acids.

From Time Magazine Archive

He runs three miles, showers, shellacs his white-gray hair and hops into the back of a black government sedan that waits outside his home in suburban Virginia.

From Time Magazine Archive

Though the sound is monaural, it has been restored lovingly and retains much of the warmth that characterized the best of Europe's prewar 78-r.p.m. shellacs.

From Time Magazine Archive

There's ice, usually, lots of it, that shellacs the sidewalks and windshields that then need to be scraped.

From "Becoming" by Michelle Obama

Retail outposts, brick-and-mortar food joints, and text-based media have not been thriving sectors for a while now, but they’ve been especially shellacked in the weird post-pandemic economy.

From Slate ● Apr. 16, 2026

Her best friend, Max, who was unofficially adopted by Suzanna’s parents and is shellacked in cynicism as played by the excellent Alden Ehrenreich, exhorts her to pull herself together and face her “big girl problems.”

From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 7, 2026

Playing Ingrid-as-Aurora — the heroine of a film that, even its biggest fan admits, is “no ‘Citizen Kane’” — Lopez is shellacked under two layers of diva artifice.

From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 9, 2025

Three months ago, the Scots were shellacked 3-0 at home by Greece, halting any sort of momentum built from three wins on the spin.

From BBC ● Jun. 7, 2025

But he might as well have been circling Pinkus’s house again — the scenery seemed protected from him, shellacked.

From "Typical American" by Gish Jen

The Lakers lost by almost 30 points per game in their four-game series against the Thunder during the regular season, and one of the games was a 43-point shellacking.

From Los Angeles Times ● May 5, 2026

Trade-driven gains for industries such as textiles or jewelry are more than offset, markets-wise, by the shellacking India’s IT outsourcers are taking from the global software selloff.

From Barron's ● Feb. 19, 2026

Just not to the extent that players shook hands once India wrapped up their shellacking.

From BBC ● Feb. 15, 2026

Then they marched into Mercedes-Benz Stadium on Saturday afternoon and found themselves on the wrong end of a 28-7 shellacking by Georgia.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 7, 2025

I, meanwhile, stayed home on Euclid Avenue, living upstairs from my mother as another leaden Chicago winter descended, shellacking the trees and sidewalks with ice.

From "Becoming" by Michelle Obama