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If we have "Plug Tops" why don't we have "Socket Bottoms"?

AncientMariner
As per the Subject really. This expression "Plug Tops" has puzzled me for years.


I can understand confusion with D-Sub Connectors where the Plug has a Female Body and Male Pins and vice-versa. Trying to describe a D-Sub Gender Changer is like explaining the Rules of Cricket:-

"You have two sides, one out in the field and one in. Each man that's in the side that's in goes out, and when he's out he comes in and the next man goes in until he's out. When they are all out, the side that's out comes in and the side that's been in goes out and tries to get those coming in, out. Sometimes you get men still in and not out.

When a man goes out to go in, the men who are out try to get him out, and when he is out he goes in and the next man in goes out and goes in. There are two men called umpires who stay out all the time and they decide when the men who are in are out. When both sides have been in and all the men have been out, and both sides have been out twice after all the men have been in, including those who are not out, that is the end of the game."

Clive

  • 0
    A plug is a plug. A plugtop is the cover. Plugtops (covers, lids, whatever) do not have fuses. Tool Station etc are idiots who don't know what they are selling.


    Another idiotic thing I see is Henry Hoovers.
  • 0
    The phrase "plug top" does not appear in BS 1363.


    As for cricket, I once tried to explain the principles to an American. We both knew that it was an impossible task. ?
  • 0

    Kelly Marie:

    I thought it was because non electrical people used to call sockets wall plugs so the bit we know as a plug became the plug top I was told this by an electrician back n he 1980s. What really gets my goat is when people usually computer types call a socket a port  I have to correct them it just grinds my gears



    Not just non electrical people.

    I have seen pre-war circuit lists in an old bank building that referred to "plugs" in different areas when clearly referring to what we would call socket outlets these days. The circuit lists for a large and high profile  installation would presumably have been approved by a technical person.
  • 0
    https://www.cardsandgifts-direct.co.uk/norbert--val-humorous-powerpoint-greeting-card-31874-p.asp
  • 0

    gkenyon:

    . . .


    In terms of the development of the English language, I think we have far less control and it is what it is.


    . . .


     



    I would call it a degradation of the English language, not a development. It is rather similar to spelling out the abbreviation OK  phoneticallly, thus "okay". What will be next? Will we call a television set a "teevee"?


    Let's see if we can apply this idea to cookery. A saucepan lid does not just fit a pan; it actually goes on top of it. So the cooking instructions may go something like: "Place the lid-top on the pan-bottom."  That should go down well with the TV chefs!
     

  • 0
    seems okay to me.  Or if you like;  warrahelza problem ?

    And remember children we use this word to demark a thing we do not think is true, or to ask if people know where something is that has gone missing


    Though I call the lid a top anyway as in " 'yon seen the top of the chip pan ? "

    But being of Northern English origin, I also "wash the dishes up", never " wash up the dishes", and say bath with the same A as mat, and not the one out of cart. 

    Softy southern affectation .
  • 0
    Tell em map. We use thoven in thkitchen too
  • 0
    East riding me.  (Hull, Hell and Halifax, may be very much alike in shape and size if you believe the song, or the old poem upon which it is based but the accent is certainly not)

    So:-

    toven in tkitchn 


    Wires get taffled, kids run through snickets, and door locks have a sneb, gates have a sneck.

    Of course I have been living "daahn saahf"  for so long I am mistaken for an  outlander in both places now.

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    mapj1:

    seems okay to me.  Or if you like;  warrahelza problem ?

    And remember children we use this word to demark a thing we do not think is true, or to ask if people know where something is that has gone missing




    Yes and no. Yes, demark a thing we do not think is true, but surely to ask if people know where something is that has gone missing it would be 'werrahelza'.


    Of course, having been daahn saahf myself for more than thirty years I have the same problems, but having split my childhood between Scotland and the best part of England (though North Riding rather than East) I can certainly sympathise (and understand your language!)


    Alasdair

  • 0
    Well, I come from Devon.


    I've always thought it strange that that is the only part of Britain where people don't have an accent and pronounce all words correctly.




    As for the dishes, can they not just be washed, or is there another method where you sometimes wash them down?

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