Wondrous Words Wednesday is a fabulous weekly meme hosted by Bermuda Onion, where we share new (to us) words that we've encountered in our weekly reading.
Today's words are from my recent reading of Memoirs of a Suburban Girl.
1. Tappets (Noun)
On your way to Surfers, the yellow Ford's tappets start tap, tap, tapping and the old girl starts sounding very sick and tired, so SB stops at a wrecking yard in a ten-house town to fish through a pile of car parts.
A tappet is a projection which imparts a linear motion to some other component within a mechanism. Wiki
A lever or projecting arm that moves or is moved by contact with another part, usually to transmit motion, as between a driving mechanism and a valve. The free dictionary.
I think that this would now constitute the maximum amount of time that I've ever spent wondering about an engine part.
2. Stobie pole (Noun)
And then when the older sister steered the old Holden around a sharp bend, it started to shimmy on the loose rocky balls, and she was finding it really hard to keep control, to the left, to the right, to the left, and she decided to brake heavily because she wanted to stop the car quickly but, oh, no, she was too young to know not to slam the brakes on a dirt road, and next you were all in a spin, and the car did a full circle, slid off the road into clumps of spiky grass, narrowly missed a Stobie pole, crashed through a wire fence, flipped on its side, and then over again until it landed upside down and came to a stop.
A Stobie pole is a power line pole made of two steel joists held apart by a slab of concrete in the middle. It was invented by Adelaide Electricity Supply Company design engineer James Cyril Stobie. Wiki
I've been to Adelaide a few times but must admit to not noticing that their power poles were any different to ours.
1. Tappets (Noun)
On your way to Surfers, the yellow Ford's tappets start tap, tap, tapping and the old girl starts sounding very sick and tired, so SB stops at a wrecking yard in a ten-house town to fish through a pile of car parts.
A tappet is a projection which imparts a linear motion to some other component within a mechanism. Wiki
A lever or projecting arm that moves or is moved by contact with another part, usually to transmit motion, as between a driving mechanism and a valve. The free dictionary.
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I think that this would now constitute the maximum amount of time that I've ever spent wondering about an engine part.
2. Stobie pole (Noun)
And then when the older sister steered the old Holden around a sharp bend, it started to shimmy on the loose rocky balls, and she was finding it really hard to keep control, to the left, to the right, to the left, and she decided to brake heavily because she wanted to stop the car quickly but, oh, no, she was too young to know not to slam the brakes on a dirt road, and next you were all in a spin, and the car did a full circle, slid off the road into clumps of spiky grass, narrowly missed a Stobie pole, crashed through a wire fence, flipped on its side, and then over again until it landed upside down and came to a stop.
A Stobie pole is a power line pole made of two steel joists held apart by a slab of concrete in the middle. It was invented by Adelaide Electricity Supply Company design engineer James Cyril Stobie. Wiki
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| Picture source |
I've been to Adelaide a few times but must admit to not noticing that their power poles were any different to ours.
Interesting, those are words that I'd probably would just pass by without checking the dictionary, even though I don't know their meaning. Thanks for these detailed explanations with visuals as well. ;)
ReplyDeleteVery interesting words.
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The pictures with the definitions helped me. I acctually studied the picture of the engine and found the tappets. Understanding an engine is like trying to understand magic. It's all the same to me - way over my head.
ReplyDeleteI've never seen poles like that! And I, too, have never spent so much time reading about a single engine part! Thanks!
ReplyDeleteNew words to me. I think it's a very good thing that she missed the Stobie pole though -- that doesn't sound like something you would want to hit.
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I'm sure my husband knows what a tappet is but it's new to me. I don't think we have Stobie poles around here but I be they're very sturdy.
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