Heh…I belong to an e mail group called Setters-L, where we discuss all things Setter. The past couple days there has been a thread flying around called…
Strippers.
I really didn’t stop to think about it much at first. I mean… I knew what they were talking about. A tool to strip a Setter’s coat.
But at the same time, if someone that didn’t know dogs saw the thread title… well… we would be thought to be talking about the other kind of stripper. Admit it… wouldn’t YOU??
So… in your hobby or job, are there words like that, that have a meaning used there that is TOTALLY unlike the conventional meaning?
I think a stripper is also one of the trades connected with typesetting and newspaper publishing. I could have sworn a female friend of mine had been a journeyman stripper.
When I hand-quilt “in the ditch”, I’m really not out in a muddy side of the road area. Usually.
Printing, actually. Mr. S and I were both (litho) strippers in a former life. A cool job that unfortunately is going to the way of the buggy-whip makers.
My birth certificate (or some other official document that was published around the time of my birth) lists my mother’s occupation as a layout stripper!
An old friend of mine, a retired pipefitter, is now working as a stripper. Now, to look at him and think “stripper” would make your head go wobbity-wobbity. It would, at least, until you saw his garage full of furniture with and without its original finish.
Another fellow would run his hand over his shiny pate and proudly tell you he was the only topless bartender in town.
I’m cautious in public when speaking to my husband, because sometimes I’ll pop out with something like, “Someone posted such and such on the Dope today” - which isn’t too bad, but then later I’ll say something along the lines of, “Yep, having the Dope is pretty handy” or “sometimes it’s pretty good to be a Doper.”
Weights (of projectiles) and powder measurements in shooting are given in grains, which is a Ye Olde Measurement based on the weight of grains of barleycorn. (1 grain= 0.06479891 grams, for what it’s worth).
This does of course cause confusion when you mention that a cartridge is loaded with, say, 2.4 grains of BullsEye powder, when there are clearly more than 2.4 individual grains of nitrocellulose in the cartridge…
Also, a “Cap” in shooting parlance refers to a Percussion Cap or a Primer, not an item of headwear (although it can mean that as well!), a Magazine is the part of the gun that the ammunition is stored in (as well as being a periodical publication), and a “Stripper Clip” is a small metal clip that holds 5 cartridges and can be used to rapidly load some military surplus rifles.
I play Hardcore mode Diablo 2, meaning if your character dies, it’s ust dead, gone forever, no restarting in town. Some people play it without even using items (items make your character stronger) and call that “n00d” play. You can play an Assassin class, which for technical reasons is not a bad choice for n00d play.
It can be nerve-wracking to open a completely innocent gaming website and see pages like “The Sin: n00d Hardcore play”.
Makes me wonder about my employer’s Internet filters.
