[see CAST ppl. a.]
1. Iron run in a molten state into molds where it has cooled and hardened.
1664. Evelyn, Kal. Hort. (1729), 232. The … Pipes … should they be of the best Cast Iron.
1665. D. Dudley, Metallum Martis, 31. Give me leave to mention that there be three sorts of cast iron.
1679. Plot, Staffordsh. (1686), 164. For the backs of Chimneys, Garden-rolls, and such like; they use a sort of cast-Iron.
1788. Alderson, Ess. Fevers, 49. If the ingenious workers of Cast Iron would turn their thoughts to this Article, Iron Bedsteads might be supplied.
1812. Sir H. Davy, Chem. Philos., 392. The process for reducing cast iron into malleable iron called blooming.
1869. Roscoe, Elem. Chem., 240. Cast iron is manufactured … chiefly from clay ironstone.
2. attrib. (commonly hyphened.)
1692. in Capt. Smith’s Seaman’s Gram., II. xiv. 110. A Cast Iron-Bullet of 4 Inches Diameter.
1756. C. Lucas, Ess. Waters, III. 104. I took then, a large flat, or shallow cast iron pot.
1816. Gentl. Mag., LXXXVI. II. 424. We have Cast-Iron Bridges, Cast-Iron Boats, Cast-Iron Roads.
1881. Metal World, 21 May, 28/2. Cast iron fences of much elaboration of pattern.
b. fig. Hard, insensible to fatigue; rigid, stern, unbending; ‘hard-and-fast,’ unyielding, wanting in pliancy or adaptiveness. (hyphened.)
1830. A. Fonblanque, Eng. under 7 Admin., II. 27. He [Wellington] was esteemed a cast-iron Statesman.
1831. Carlyle, Sart. Res. (1858), 19. His look … of that cast-iron gravity frequent enough among our own Chancery suitors.
1856. Emerson, Eng. Traits, xii. Those eupeptic studying mills, the cast-iron men.
1870. Lowell, Study Wind., 159. He laid down … no cast-iron theorem, to which circumstances must be fitted as they rose.
1876. Lubbock, Elementary Educ., in Contemp. Rev., June, 80. It is very undesirable to lay down cast-iron rules of this kind.
1886. C. D. Warner, Summer in Garden, 51. What a man needs in gardening is a cast-iron back,—with a hinge in it.
