You know, the zig zag scissors.
Why are they called Pinking Shears? I’ve wondered this for years.
Thank you very much for tolerating my brainfarts.
The software won’t let me post just a quote, so here you go:
What are they good for?
Generally when you cut fabric with pinking shears it prevents or greatly reduces the amount of fraying on that edge. Good for sewing, especially if you have a small seam allowance and very prone-to-fraying fabric. The edge of the fabric will look like a sawblade after you cut it with pinking shears.
In fact, the “fancy edge” meaning of pink predates the color meaning. The connection is pink carnations, so called for their shape, but which ended up lending their name to the color.
I wanted to say that. Pinks are a variety of dianthis (which I’m probably misspelling) and actually are not the same as carnations to my knowledge, though they are related. They are so named because the edges of the petals are pinked - they have a serrated shape. The flower later lent its name to the color.
Pinks and Carnations are all various species of Dianthus, but not the same ones. And ditto; I really wanted to say that - pink is probably my favourite etymology, just because it is the perfect reverse of most people’s assumptions.
Huh.
It’s not nearly as exotic or mysterious as I thought.
Thanks for doing the leg work!
This is one of the five or so things I remember from my intro botany class. Sad I know. But none the less, I was gonna mention that certain flowers are pinked… and so on and so forth.
I knew the stab definition of the word because I stepped on a nail sticking out of a board on the side a gravel road as a child and they were concerned I might have “pinked” a nerve. (Yep, they gave me a tetnus booster too.)
My childhood nickname was “Pinkie,” and for years I thought those shears were “Pinkie shears.”
I can definitively state from childhood experience that they are not good for giving your little sister a haircut when she has a junior ballet recital in two days.
Couldn’t sit down for a week after that one.