My latest column for the Malaysian Star appeared today. This one is about words associated with hazing, especially the kind of hazing that sends newbies to go look for things that don't exist: type lice, italic spaces, a left-handed monkey wrench, a left-handed hammer, buckets of steam, bags of electricity, wheelbarrow seed, and fifty feet of shoreline.
I used to work in a factory and we used to send the new guys to the supply hut for a "long wait". They would go, request what they thought they we said ("long weight") and they were told to sit over there until we call for you.
Grant,
I have to disagree with one of your "impossible" items. I have seen left-handed coffee cups. They have the graphic emblazoned on the other side.
And, I would like to add radiator hoses for old VW Beetles and Corvairs to your list of impossible items.
What is sometimes even more fun is to ask for something that sounds impossible but actually exists; go into a hardware store and ask for left-handed drill bits. They are a speciality item and their more proper name is reverse-twist drills. They are made for multi-drill heads on machining equipment and reduce the number of gears needed in the head. They also balance the torque in the work piece. In the next-to-last place I asked for some, the clerk was on-the-ball and replied that I must be trying to extract a broken bolt. I was and they really work better than E-Z-outs, which also have a left-handed twist.
Emmett
And, of course, italic spaces now exist. Here's one: .
I read recently that "sniper" (and the back-formed verb "to snipe" derived from the snipe hunt. It's certainly changed the images "snipe hunt" brings to mind.
EmmettRedd said:
I have to disagree with one of your “impossible” items. I have seen left-handed coffee cups. They have the graphic emblazoned on the other side.
Well, yes, but the graphic doesn't prevent an other-hander from drinking from the cup, does it? I've seen right-handed musicians try to play left-handed guitars and it just doesn't work very well unless they learned it that way from the start (and there was one fellow who did).