Questionable Terminology

I can clearly recall my Mother describing some particular tool, cooking tongs, hanging with arms akimbo.  I’ve used that expression many times especially in relation to blacksmith tongs.  I don’t like them to hang that way so I pay attention to making them with the reins coming off the box at an offset and angle which lets them hang straight down and not sticking out “arms akimbo.”

After trying to find a source on the web which verified the use of the term in the manner I was using it I was disappointed.  The term seems to be highly specific to the human posture of standing with elbows crooked so the hands rest on the hips.  There was one reference to it meaning using a weapon in each hand  in a computer game.  I didn’t find anything related to a tool hanging with arms diverging.

I did happen to turn up some images I took at ABANA LaCrosse in 2002.  One showed a person standing with arms akimbo.  Actually, it is a photo of Maegan Crowley and Corinna Mensoff demonstrating.  That gives me the opportunity to point to web links to these two very talented artists.

http://corrinasephora.com

http://ironmaeganmetalworks.com/home.html

I’ll probably just keep using akimbo in the same non-approved way I always have, at least in my mind.  Who knows maybe it will even catch on.  That’s one way language changes.

Tongs hanging with reins "akimbo."

Corrina and Maegan at ABANA LaCrosse in 2002.

Knowing the Name

Quite a few years ago I was standing and visiting at the counter in a lumber yard office when a person came in and up to the counter and said, “I need a board.”  I could almost see the service manager struggling to not roll his eyes.  Since the potential customer didn’t seem to be familiar with lumber language, I’m pretty sure he was anticipating the extended dialog that would be necessary to figure out what they needed.

For some reason that scene has stuck in my mind and reminds me to try to learn the customary names for the objects I encounter.  Last week I was stumped in my effort to settle on the name for the Item I’ve attempted to roughly illustrate here.

I did a Google image search for some terms I thought might give me what I had in mind.  I tried, Rod Lock, Stop, Catch, Detent, Keeper, Tab, Key, Ear and a few others with no luck.  After that failure I drew a sketch and decided to ask anyone I encountered what they called this mechanical structure.  Every person I questioned immediately recognized it but couldn’t come up with a name.  Finally, and engineer called it a shaft tab lock.  I went back and did a search for that and still had no luck.

Finally, by searching “hydraulic door closer”, which I knew used that mechanical technology on some models, I found the image here. http://www.allaboutdoors.com/article_info.php?articles_id=141

The article described them as lugs.  In my own terminology I had always called them ear tabs since they stick out like ears.  I’m now thinking they are properly called lugs but the term isn’t widely known.  In my mind I’m going to call them ear tab lugs.