glass
The glass glass shattered, but the plastic was okay.
The sentence states that the glass-material drinking vessel broke while a plastic one survived.
Meanings (pronounced /ɡlæs/)
made of glass — used as a noun-modifier to indicate the material
- A glass coffee table.
- Glass beads strung on a wire.
a drinking vessel, typically cylindrical and open at the top, traditionally made of glass material
- He filled the glass with water.
- Crystal glasses were a wedding gift.
Word origin
From Old English glæs, from Proto-Germanic *glasą, from a Proto-Indo-European root meaning 'to shine, gleam' (the same root that gives 'glow' and 'gleam'). The verb 'to glass' (to enclose in glass) developed in Middle English from the noun.
Fun fact
Glass-the-material and glass-the-drinking-vessel are the same word — the vessel was named for its material because medieval glasses were among the first everyday objects made of true glass (most cups had been wood, horn, or pottery). The word is one of countless cases where a material name became a noun for objects made of it.