In the US when we have a semi truck and trailer get into a locked position like shown HERE, we say it is “jackknifed”. Because it resembles a folding pocket knife called a jacknife.
So what word is used in other countries?
The same although it is often misused in the press. They tend to describe any lorry that has skidded and slewed across the road as a ‘jacknifed juggernaut’, even if it is not articulated. I imagine that the word and this use of it are American imports.
Is the term jacknife (for the knife) particular to the US? My dictionary dates it to 1711.
I wonder if we will hear from Jackknifed Juggernaut on this thread.
Etymology Online says the origin is “probably American English”. Interestingly, by 1776 it was used as a verb meaning “to stab”. The truck accident sense appeared in 1949.
They use the same term in Australia apparently.
I doubt if there were many, if any, articulated vehicles in the UK at that time,and that we probably didn’t start borrowing it until the 1960s.
In Dutch it is “geschaard”. Scissored.
Yeah, pretty much.
The object itself, I would probably call a clasp knife. But nobody would say “the truck clasp-knifed across the road”
In English, scissoring is reserved for… something else.
In Norwegian we’re more focused on how it got there than what it looks like in the end. In an accident like that the conveyance is described as having gotten a “throw/dangle” (sleng).
If it’s the result of a bad job backing up, we say the driver “crossed” the trailer. (tverre)
Both can also be described as being scissored, like in Dutch.
I think the Spanish, when describing a lorry jackknifed, is “plegarse”.
I can’t put a number to it, but there were actually more registered lorries in 1950 than there are now and it seems that a good many were either articulated or towing trailers with an ‘A’ frame. Of course, they were much smaller than today’s.
Before articulated lorries came along the verb jackknife was used with respect to, e.g, carts drawn by teams of horses, which can be jackknifed by a shart turn if (as is common) there is a hinge between the shaft-and-yoke assembly to which the horses are harnessed and the cart behind. The OED has cites back to 1886.
They’re probably making a reference to Airbag by Radiohead, which features the phrase prominently in the lyrics. It’s very well known in the UK, enough so that most people would get the reference.
In Japanese it’s called (jack knife phenomenon), obviated borrowed from English
Perhaps not surprisingly, the term used in Canada for a jacknifed truck, is “jacknifed truck.” I learned to drive a semi years ago, and I remember my instructor telling me how to get out of a jacknife, should things seem to be heading that way.
We also call folding pocketknives “jacknives,” so it makes sense.
In Spain the action itself is dar (un) latigazo; “to give a whip lash”, “whiplash”. The verb gets conjugated as for any other situation, a truck that has jacknifed ha dado latigazo.
It’s “jackknifed” in South Africa. Even though we call the actual knife a pocket knife or pen knife.
Damn autocorrect and not checking.
“obviously”
It definitely caught my eye. :). For the record, mine came from the Radiohead song.