<VV> Hockey sticks and terminological exactitudes

David B. Neale david.neale3 at ntlworld.com
Sat May 31 16:03:49 EDT 2008


Use of 'alternative' names for motor-car components is widespread and as 
old as the hills.  Whilst engineers from Stuttgart to wherever may well 
refer to a particular component as a this, or, for that matter, a that,  
the practice of referring to components by other names is nothing new.

Components are blessed with other names according to their geographical 
location, too.  What you call rocker panels, or covers, we in England 
call sills.  Our rocker covers are your valve covers.  Your oil-pan is 
our sump. Your convertible top is our hood, and your hood is our bonnet. 
The list, in fact, goes on and on.  In France, a gearbox, (your 
transmission), is a boite de vitesses ... a box of speeds, literally.  
Are they wrong?  Are we wrong?

Provided that my hockey sticks don't drop off my Corvair whilst motoring 
along a local 'B' road between the Shires to purchase some aubergines 
for our Lancashire hot-pot, (which aubergines I will place in the boot, 
although you'd use the trunk), then I don't give a pig's burp what they 
are called.  I suspect most other people don't, either!!

Yoiks!  Tally-Ho!

David






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