MissAnn and I both arrived early for the chat yesterday, and she tested my mechanical engineering vocabulary. I failed. Seems I, like many laypeople, call the ball from a ball bearing a ball bearing instead of the more correct ball. Although, I also used to call those balls steelies in the contexts of the game of marbles. (I suppose to be absolutely accurate, one should call it a ball bearing ball, but that way lies madness.

Anyway, that lead me to ask her if she knew what a zerk was. I hadn't thought of one of these little metal nipples in a long time. Turns out the word is eponymous, named after its inventor, Oscar U. Zerk. That lead me to think of the device on the opposite end of a zerk: a grease gun, which term, I learned from my dad, was an informal designation for the M3 submachine gun.

[Fixed typo.]

This message has been edited. Last edited by: zmježd,

Which leads me to ask, "what is a 'grease fitting'?"

The obsolescent small projections that were once fitted to bearings to allow the introduction of fresh grease are always known, in the UK, as "grease nipples".

Is this maybe another example of a US euphemism, adopted to avoid any possible association with a sexual term?

Is this maybe another example of a US euphemism, adopted to avoid any possible association with a sexual term?

Could be. You know what prudes auto mechanics are. I never heard of grease nipples until much later on. It didn't seem to stop us from talking about the gender of connectors and fasteners.

Could we have a picture of a zerk? I'm not following.

quote:

Could be. You know what prudes auto mechanics are.

I was thinking of the American prudery that apparently turned cocks into roosters and titbits into tidbits.

Could we have a picture of a zerk?

A picture of a zerk or another zerk.

I was thinking of the American prudery that apparently turned cocks into roosters and titbits into tidbits.

And, I was being unamericannily ironic.

Oh, I think I've seen a "zerk" before!

I do like that word "unamericannily."

quote:

And, I was being unamericannily ironic.

I think I'd guessed that.

And, yes, those items you call zerks we call grease nipples. My old Rudge is studded with the things, all requiring attention frequently, if not before every ride.

quote:

Originally posted by Richard English:
I was thinking of the American prudery that apparently turned cocks into roosters and titbits into tidbits.

According to the OED Online, tidbit was originally (17th century) tyd bit or tid bit. Here's the first citation:

c1640 J. SMYTH Lives Berkeleys (1885) III. 25 A tyd bit, i.e. a speciall morsell reserved to eat at last.

Tit-bit came later:

1694 MOTTEUX Rabelais IV. xlvi, He promis'd double Pay..to any one that should bring him such a Tit-bit piping-hot.

Zerk fitting is, as ZMJ said in his original post, named after the man who invented it, Oscar U. Zerk. It wasn't until later it was called a grease nipple. Perhaps one of these pictures will suggest why.

Tinman

Could I just quietly slip a greasy Limerick in here? Or two??? Thank you very much .....

....
A woman who lives in Dunkirk
Has balls, but her bearings don't work.
So she put out some calls
For a man bearing balls;
She looks forward to lubing his zerk.

... and ...

The mechanic who worked on the tipple
From his ladyfriend heard not a ripple.
She skedaddled away
When he asked her to stay.
Then he knew that he'd lubed the wrong nipple.

...... tit for tat, eh ?

.... oh, well, let's make it three (while I have your attention) ..

A mother who's first name was Pat
Had triplets, named Tom, Tim, and Tat.
It was fine in the breeding
But not in the feeding,
For, you see, there was no tit for Tat.

Nice, Jer! Slip them on the wiki (or I'll slip you a mickey ).

I wish we'd get our limeriwiki going. It could be so much fun!

I'll write a few at the weekend.

quote:

Zerk fitting is, as ZMJ said in his original post, named after the man who invented it, Oscar U. Zerk. It wasn't until later it was called a grease nipple. Perhaps one of these pictures will suggest why.

Since the eponymous Mr Zerk died in 1968, I suspect that his term came after the original. I have always used the name "grease nipple" since I was old enough to understand the term - say 60 years. I can say that I have never heard grease nipples referred to as zerks in the UK, and grease nipple is the term that appears in all the technical manuals I have, the earliest being about a century old.

I note, too, that most of the online dictionaries do not included the word, those that do being American. Wiktionary suggests that a zerk is a special type of grease fitting, but how it differs from other such fittings isn't specified.

Interesting, too, that all the definitions I have seen talk about a grease "fitting". I have never heard that expression in the UK. Most greasing points are served by nipples, although, in applications that need constant greasing screw-down greasers are used. Of course, both screw-down greasers and nipples are now very rare since most joints are now sealed for life and the old chore of greasing-up is a thing of the past (except to those of us who are eccentric enough to use 75-year-old cars or motorcycles.

An article from 1934 in Time about Mr Oscar Ulysses Zerk.

Mr Zerk's US patent 1,619,454 for a lubricant receiving nipple was filed on 05 July 1923 and granted on 01 March 1927 (possibly before RE was born or conceived). I think it's probable that the public came to call a Zerk lubricant receiving nipple, just a plain old zerk. Whether this had to do with squeamishness over the word (and/or concept of) nipple I leave to others to obsess over. I do note that Mr Zerk refers to a (lubricant) nipple throughout, but not a grease nipple.

If you search the US PTO site for patents with the inventor Zerk you find a lot more lubricant-related inventions.

quote:

And, I was being unamericannily ironic.

Damn, them zerks are cute!
Damn, that irony was typically American.

As an aside, the idea that Americans would be too prudish to call a nipple a nipple is pretty ludicrous, and I say this as a member of the generation of American mothers who brought public nursing of infants back into general acceptance! However, I think that "grease nipple" was probably not macho enough for American mechanics. It might have sounded too silly and feminine to their ears, and so, not for reasons of prudery, but for reasons of sexism, they prefered the far stronger, more masculine sounding "zerk," which only coincidentally rhymes with "jerk."

Wordmatic

quote:

As an aside, the idea that Americans would be too prudish to call a nipple a nipple is pretty ludicrous

It was only a suggestion - and there are enough examples American prudishness about words for it to have been a definite possibility.