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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

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    Makes me feel right at home flying over the local hill on a broomstick then, lancashire near yorkshire i am pretty fluent in both. Them posh sarfs know not what they are missing.
  • Former Community Member
    0 Former Community Member
    And you think you've got problems - I'm a Welshman, living amongst the heathens - and they simply can't understand that we do do that, Mun or I'll do in now, in a minute. Asking what's occurring or describing something as cowing tidy (or lush) is often a moment (or several) of total incomprehension. DFUQ is wrong with these people


    I have to make regular trips back to the land of dragons just to reset the system ? - not so much down south more "gone east" for me. As my old mum used to say, trust no b***** north of the M4 and East of the M5.


    It's not so difficult once you understand that plugs go on the wall and on the end of the flex - if you need more granularity, the plug on the end of the flex is a plug top and the plug on the wall is a plug socket - simples. Unless of course it's a plug that goes in the light (usually for the iron), then it gets messy.


    Regards


    OMS




  • 0

    AncientMariner:

    How old do you have to be, to be old school? I am approaching 71, yet other than on this website, I have never heard of a Plug Top.


    So I am wondering whether "Plug Tops" is a regional thing?


    Trevor Linsley's "Advanced Electrical Installation Work on page 354 refers to Plug Tops. https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=1vcJBAAAQBAJ&pg=PT364&lpg=PT364&dq=plug+top+definition&source=bl&ots=3HF2TTWa37&sig=ACfU3U2jUsnR1qeyAwH-5Pw3YTapj9QOCA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjm-onFvN7nAhVNURUIHbvdB4s4ChDoATAEegQIChAB#v=onepage&q=plug%20top%20definition&f=false


    Tool Station not only sell Plug Tops but also Plug Top Fuses, as do CEF and TLC... Screwfix don't!

    Clive

     




    I agree with you.

    I'm a few years older than you and I have never referred to plugs as plug tops.

    A plug top is something that covers the terminals within a plug.

    A plug was always connected to the load and usually had pins whereas a socket was something that provided power and had shielded connections into which the plug fitted into.

  • 0

    geoffsd:

    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?




     

    Strange! I used to think that the Home Counties was the only place in the world where they spoke correctly and everywhere else they had an accents. Then Americans put me right. ("I lurve yer aehccent!")


    I haven't heard of washing dishes down. I've heard of washing a car down but not of washing a car up. If you are going to wash a car it is advisable to park it first. Or as the Americans would say, park it up.
  • 0
    I think around here it was always plugs and sockets but the more "correct" tech types used the term plugtop more that just plug. Clean up and oil down always made me we wonder in the engineering workshops rather than clean down and oil up. Probably why I appreciated the daft skit. "Its raining!" , "Is it raining up or down?" , "Down of course, why ask?", "Well folk say that it rains up in Scotland!"



    Footnote - The old ones are the best
  • 0
    Thinking more widely about electrical/electronic connectors, plugs normally have pins (male), sockets have receptacles.  Cable mounted connectors can be either plugs or sockets, depending if they have pins or receptacles, and similarly chassis/panel (wall?) mounted connectors can be plugs or sockets.


    On that basis, when it comes to mains connectors, the wall mounting half is the socket and the cable mounted part is a plug.  As above, a pug top is something that goes over a plug to protect it.


    Of course it can be more complicated if the connector has both pins and receptacles, but again I understand the convention is the majority prevails (two pins one receptacle is a plug).


    David
  • 0

    davidwalker2:

    As above, a plug top is something that goes over a plug to protect it.



    Ah, a plug helmet! ?


    Clive
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    LOL
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    After all it`s not socket science is it?



    Gosh that was terrible even for me
  • 0

    davidwalker2:


    . . .

    Of course it can be more complicated if the connector has both pins and receptacles, but again I understand the convention is the majority prevails (two pins one receptacle is a plug).


    David




     

    Ah, we may be getting somewhere now! The (now obsolete) Wylex 13 A plug system used to have something like that. A 13 A plug could have sockets into which you could plug in a smaller plug, say 5 A. The pins were flat but slightly thinner, so that they would plug either directly into the 13 A socket or into the socket of a 13 A plug. This plug could have sockets to take a 2 A plug with even thinner pins. It had no sockets so could rightly be called a plug top. It was at the top of the (rather unwieldy) pile!

    https://www.plugsocketmuseum.nl/Wylex1.html

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