Consider, for example, US 50, which is part of the US Highway System (a designation that pertains to how its maintenance is funded). It has one foot in Ocean City New Jersey and the other foot in Sacramento California, traversing the country as one continuous road. Along sections of its run, it shares the roadbed with various Interstates; on other stretches, it is two lanes wide and has intersections (notably in Nevada it earned the name “the loneliest road”). It goes through towns as a regular arterial, indistinguishable from a city street. It is a “highway” because it is a major connector between cities that supports traffic moving in excess of 50 miles per hour in lesser-populated areas, but many of its segments bear no resemblance to a “freeway”.
Contrast this with Interstate 80, which runs from San Francisco to Teaneck: at no place along its length (barring ubiquitous road construction) is it less than 4 lanes wide, nor can you get on or off it except by ramp or cross the grade itself against the flow. It is, yes, a highway, as well as a freeway, from end to end.
There might not be a distinction between “highway” and “freeway” where you live, but where I live there is.
As a USAian, in this list I’ve only heard doodad and thingamajig in my country as a placeholder object referrer. (This is the first time for me to even see “oojamaflip”.) I’ve heard thingamabob more often than thingamajig however.
The way I read it, eschereal didn’t claim that “Interstate” is synonymous with freeway, nor that an Interstate is not a highway. He said that this particular example of an Interstate highway is a freeway throughout.
His definition conforms to my own experience, and Wikipedia agrees fwiw:
“Highway” always controlled access? Maybe, but not necessarily interstate-style ramps — THAT’S a freeway. So, all freeways are highways, but not all highways are freeways.
Woody Guthrie wrote that song not just about freeways — of which there were very few when he wrote it (Pennsylvania Turnpike, Bronx River Parkway, Pasadena Freeway, and a few more).
As stroller has overtaken buggy… When I was an American child, I never saw a pram. we only had pushchairs. Which were called buggies, and had rubber bumpers. Which is to say, “rubber baby buggy bumpers”.
Heat/heater for handgun is way out of use. It was used by mobsters in the first half of the 20th century, maybe as late as the 50s or 60s. Even when it was in use, it wasn’t anywhere close to the most common term for a handgun. It’s only used now in fiction about that culture/era. I suspect barker is roughly the same, if not even older.
I had the sense that people were talking about 2 different things, so I thought a concrete example of what redundancy (in the UK) actually is like might help. Also the concept of redundancy money as a form of compensation: in an odd way, there is often something almost apologetic about a UK redundancy. (Not to say that it isn’t sometimes used as a vindictive no-comeback way of firing someone. But that’s an abuse).
I’m with Kiwi on this one - I had never heard of Barker as handgun and was thinking exclusively of Fairground Barker. So…
Partridge gives both senses (in A Dictionary of the Underworld), tracing handgun back to Scott (1815) and Dickens (1838) - both UK cites if I have the right Scott and Dickens. For the fairground usage he goes back to Grose’s Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue (and beyond, actually) - another UK source. Grose’s definitiion is cracking: The shopman of a a Bow-Wow shop, or dealer in second hand clothes, particularly about Monmouth -Street, who walks before his master’s door, and deafens every passenger with his cries of — Clothes, coats or gowns — what d’ye want, gemmen? What d’ye buy?
I gather that the invention of “thingamajig” is widely attributed to Lewis Carroll, in his long poem “The Hunting of the Snark”. One of the crew members in the seaborne quest for said creature was extremely absent-minded, and had indeed forgotten his own name – his shipmates addressed him by whatever thing came into their heads:
“He would answer to ‘Hi’, or to any loud cry,
Such as ‘Fry me !’ or ‘Fritter my wig !’
To ‘What-you-may-call-um’ or ‘What-was-his-name !’
But especially ‘Thing-um-a-jig’.”
Those who ascribe coining of this expression to Carroll, opine that “thingamabob” was thought of later, as a variant, by persons unknown. Another UK expression for a vague something, “whatchamacallit”, is likewise sometimes suggested as an adaptation of the germ of an idea from Carroll, as above. One would reckon that there is the possibility that either or both of these terms were not from original inspiration on Carroll’s part; but that they’d already existed, coined by “Anon” – old Lewis, having heard them, just gave them wider currency.
The UK wins for better haircut but loses for haircut name. Quiff? Come … on. How can you not come up with a better name for a cut that would beat one named after a fish???