OT. Why "plug top"

Have you been working with my apprentices?

If it's good enough for

Owain

there was a young lad in our amateur theatre who wanted a "negative" screwdriver.

Presumably they're the same people who call 13A mains sockets "plug sockets"?

Unlikely since the socket was permanently installed.

Just the plug would be the bit that goes in the hole.

So I suppoose it should really be a plug and top.

Well, if a plug top is that bit that goes on top then I suppose the rest must be the plug :)

That's actually a nice bit of lateral thinking: a flat-blade screwdriver is a "negative" and a Philips cross-head is a "positive". If he didn't know the correct name, he invented one whose meaning was (hopefully) immediately understood.

Better than asking for striped paint or a tin of sparks for the grinder ;-)

It was. But he'd misheard "Pozidrive" as "positive"

I had a boss who wanted "bull points" on the word processor.

She meant an unordered list.

Owain

In article snipped-for-privacy@googlegroups.com, Murmansk snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com writes

I don't know the answer to your question, but I did find that if I asked for 1/2 dozen plug tops I got them at trade price whereas 1/2 dozen plugs came at retail price.

Well, I wondered this as well, but was told that it was because of said people who did not know tops from bottoms, so to speak and did not want to make the male female comparison, which is daft cose if they used plug and receptacle or socket it would suffice. I remember somebody making multiple coloured tops or for plugs which then make s it more confusing. Ie I need some 13amp plugtops with a green plug top a red plug top and a yellow plug top. Nurse bring on the men in white coats. Brian

you can only see the top when plugged in ...

Did you ever see the front of the Enya album, Paint the Sky with Stars? She was pictured with a pot of paint and a brush doing exactly tat. Very silly, but then why not? Brian

Forget all this nonsense ! What irritates me is people talking about plugging out an appliance. Its unplugging you mean

My mum used to do that, so not new. And she was around in the days of gas lighting.

Did try and explain things to her. ;-)

I had one that actually failed to fill a skip.

Nice pile of rubbish next to the empty skip.

I've always wondered why people say "plug top" when they're talking about a 13 amp mains plug?

Is that a regional thing? I'm pushing 50 years old and I've never heard that expression in my life.

Regards.

Ant.