A ‘Did you know?’ article says ‘Daddy long legs are not spiders.’ There is a discussion as to whether this is a true statement. The article contends that Opiliones, harvestmen, are ‘daddy long legs’ and Pholcidae, ‘cellar spiders’, are not. Where I grew up, in Southern California, I never saw or heard of harvestmen. ‘Cellar spiders’ were called daddy long legs. ‘Cellar spider’ is a problematic name where houses tended to be built on cement slabs and cellars were uncommon. I think that since ‘daddy long legs’ is a colloquial name, Opiliones and Pholcidae are both ‘daddy long legs’. What do you think?
A woman gets upset when people call her Jeep a truck. ‘It’s not a truck. It’s a Jeep!’ ‘Jeep’ (lowercase ‘j’) was a term applied to many things before and during WWII. In 1936, Eugene the Jeep appeared in Popeye comics. He was described as a magical fourth-dimensional creature living in a three-dimensional world. Once can see how capable military vehicles would be come to be called ‘jeeps’. At one time, new recruits were called ‘jeeps’. And several WWII vehicles were called jeeps, not just the Willy’s MB and the Ford GPW. Here’s the thing: The nomenclature for the WWII jeeps were ‘Willys ¼-Ton Truck’. Given that officially, jeeps were trucks, is it improper to call a Jeep (capital ‘J’, and excluding the newer ‘car-style’ Jeeps) a truck?
Speaking of trucks, is a pick-up truck (‘ute’, to you Antipodeans) a truck? What if it’s built on a car chassis, or a chassis that is not traditionally a ‘truck’? The Jeep Comanche retained the unibody construction of the Cherokee for the front half and had a body-on-frame for the bed, but was basically a Cherokee pick-up. Are they trucks? Or is only one of them a truck? Or neither? What about the VW Rabbit Pickup or the Subaru BRAT? If they’re not trucks, are they pick-ups? And if they are pick-ups, does that make them trucks?
An Englishman might find the concept of biscuits and gravy disgusting. Are the english wrong to call cookies ‘biscuits’?
One could nitpick this to death. I have a good friend that calls his Suzuki Samurai a Jeep. No it is not, but why would I care? His kids know that my Willys is a “real” Jeep. He taught them that.
Yes my CJ-2a is a 1/4 ton truck. Call it a truck if you want, call it a Jeep if that feels right to you. Me? I call it “The 2a”.
Is my son’s Datsun Xterra a truck? Why not. As long as we communicate, names like this should not matter. Yeah I know its a Nissan, I call it a Datsun to bug his wife. I also call it a minivan for the same reason. She is just too fun to tease.
I often call any automobile a rig. Many say a rig is a semi-truck. Others think that a rig is a motorcycle sidecar setup. I call that a hack. If the term rig confuses other folks, I should choose another term. I do try to remember to be a bit more descriptive.
If we are going to talk about The Brits & cars, a bonnet is a hood, a boot the trunk. They also spell things funny, a tyre?
OTOH, While many folks outside The States go on holiday, we call that a vacation.
Some folks call a helicopter an airplane. This can be confusing to aircraft servicing folks. All aircraft have registration numbers painted on them in large print in conspicuous places, so we use the “N” number to identify which aircraft to work on next. N & NC = USA; C = Canada & X = Mexico etc.
I do not argue over this stuff. Some folks get all up in arms over minor differences in terminology I do not see why.
Oh, They are all daddy long legs to me as well. I am not looking that close at one.
The Subaru BRAT was a car. At least according to US customs law.
The funky seats in the open bed were there precisely because they let the Japanese import it as a car at a time when punitive tarriffs and quotas had been slapped on Japanese trucks.