A few days ago, Language Log had a discussion of Australian election slang (we had a national election on 3 May; the overall result is known, but the final count continues). One commenter linked to a similar discussion on Language Hat, which in turn links to an article on The Guardian. Out of all the terms discussed (I would call them jargon rather than slang), my eye was caught by corflute. This term is used by some people for what I would call an election poster, named for the particular material used. I first became aware of this term either during the last national election in 2022 or the last state election in 2023. 

There are four steps here: corrugated plastic > Corflute® > corflute > a corflute/corflutes. Corrugated plastic is “a wide range of extruded twin-wall plastic-sheet products produced from high-impact polypropylene resin”, which are light, strong and weather-resistant, and used for packaging, storage and, relevantly, posters for indoor or outdoor use, including advertising and political campaigning. Various trademarked names include trade names of Correx, Biplex, Cartonplast, Polyflute, Coroplast, FlutePlast, IntePro, Proplex, Twinplast, Corriflute and Corflute (all ®). In Australia, the most common name is Corflute®, which has become a genericised trademark, so that all corrugated plastic is called corflute, whether it’s Corflute® or something else. 

Election posters generally fall into two categories: those advertising a party and those advertising an individual candidate, representing a party or standing as an independent (does one stand or run?). These are seen as a necessary evil: part of the campaign process, but an eyesore and contributor to environmental pollution. Parties and individuals are quicker to put them up than they are to take them down. One state limits their use, passing the Electoral (Control of Corflutes) Amendment Act 2024 (SA). The word corflute(s) doesn’t appear in the text of the act. Rather, it specifies “an electoral advertising poster”, defined as ” a poster, notice or sign displaying an electoral advertisement” without reference to the material (so that people can’t say “This is not a corflute because it’s made of paper/cardboard/some other plastic/some other material”).

I asked my Facebook friends if they knew about the term. Their answers varied according to their own experience. Some knew it as a generic product but not as a trademarked name or its use in election posters. Others knew it as election posters, but not as a product name. One hobby artist said it’s often used as a support for paintings or sketches. One USA friend better knew the name coroplast, which seems to be the generic name there. Google Ngrams shows the use of corflute increasing since 1990 and especially 2010, while coroplast dates from 1880s, which needs some explanation, and peaked between 1980 and 2000. Wikipedia has a separate article for coroplast, but corflute redirects to corrugated plastic. Pages for Mac and WordPress don’t recognise any of the trademarked names, either in upper case or lower case text.