What does this mean?

[James Wilkinson]

Just saw this in a freecycle ad:

"Trampoline (10 foot diameter) with safety net - needs cleaning, one netting pole has telescoped so needs pulling out of itself."

[GB]

It means: It's not worth fettling to stick on ebay. It's too big for me to cart to the dump easily.

[James Wilkinson]

I tried to look up the word fettling, and Opera directed me to fettling.com, something to do with West Yorkshire foundries :-)

[James Wilkinson]

You can get good stuff on freecycle, like my 6 month old dishwasher!

[James Wilkinson]

I've never heard of or thought about "telescoping" meaning retracted, only the exact opposite. Isn't there another word for the opposite of telescoped?

[Bill Wright]

I'm sorry but why would you look up such a basic well-known word?

Bill

[harry]

The word is commonly used to mean cleaning/minor repairs in Yorkshire.

A "fettler" is a tradesperson who cleans up castings after they have been turned out of the mould.

[tim...]

Some people (including me) have a resistance to the aggravation of selling something to even, by other's standards, quite large values.

I've freecycled stuff with a value of about 50 quid.

I don't need 50 quid enough to go though all the aggro.

Just because some people are so poor that they can make a "living" selling empty jam jars on eBay at 5p a time doesn't mean that we all want to do it.

That's true

tim

[tim...]

because you used it in a sense that was not in keeping with its well know meaning

tim

[ARW]

Na - it 12 months to get a divorce

[GB]

Oh bugger, that's me, then. I just thought fettling something meant to clean it up and put it in working order.

In fact, that's what the OED says - see definition 1.1 here:

However, it's Northern English, and not everyone has been brought up on a diet of Fred Dibnah.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Its odd, the dictionaries dont seem to have caught up with modern usage. Originally it was trimming off clay mould lines or mould lines on casting, but its come to mean any sort of 'improvement by manual labour' So parts that don't quite fit get 'fettled'; with e.g. a file till they do..

[The Natural Philosopher]

Odd, cos I am anything but Northern, and its well known to me.

Maybe the engineering bit is the key. Engineers use it a lot.

[Steve Walker]

Same here in Lancashire. Now where is that bastard file? Yes, that word is used deliberately, as many will know.

[Steve Walker]

Telescopes move both in and out, so the word fits for both.

I am more used to it in the retracting sense. For instance, it is commonly used about vehicles in accidents - i.e. where in a railway accident, one carriage smashes through the end of another.

[T i m]

I'd say it can (as in your original), in a slightly looser usage.

I'd say the more typical usage is to 'adjust, tune or maintain', as in 'these old motorbikes take a bit of fettling'.

It's funny I fixed my mates sons goalposts (physical not life plan ) because the plastic, tubular diagonal support seemed to be missing a joining piece. It turned out the 'joining piece' was a piece of tube that slid inside the two pieces that made up the support and the joint had slid down entirely into one of them.

Cheers, T i m

[T i m]

Or the Dyson cylinder that just needed a new plug (broken cable near the moulded plug) or the 13 month old (and as new looking) washing machine that did need some imagination to repair but we did and it lasted nearly 8 years. ;-)

We are also enjoying a very comfortable and again 'as new looking' 3 seater leather settee. [1]

Cheers, T i m

[1] It looks like new because they didn't have stinking cats ripping everything up. ;-)

p.s. On that, one of our friends is on callout to the local Council to do things like ... removing dead animals from the highway or pavement and he got called out the other evening to somewhere quite near his house to collect a dead cat someone had reported.

It turns out it was the 'missing cat' of a neighbour and their third over a fairly short period. Apparently the first two were run over by the same delivery lorry delivering to their house (on two different occasions) and the third by causes unknown. Hopefully they will have learned a lesson by this and not replacing it with something else that could eventually become someone else's problem. ;-(

There should be a pet owners charter (that covers *all* pets) and that is 'All pets must be kept under control at all times'. Pets / children etc ... ;-)

[Brian Gaff]

Well, one assumes that the adjustable pole has, erm maladjusted and got stuck? Do you know that these devices cause almost as many people to go to a/I as glossy magazines left on floors?

Brian

[Dave Plowman (News)]

It's very little aggro *selling* on Ebay - and can give some fun as regards what it might make.

The aggro is more packing it up and sending it. Especially if large.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Because it is a local thing, and the item collected. Packing large items for the 'post' is not an easy job for most casual sellers.