WORD GAMES

How many times have you heard an uninformed person refer to an insulator as a condenser? Being at a loss to understand their confusion over the nomenclature of an item that was so commonplace, I decided to do a little digging on the subject. This led to yet further research on other words relating to the art of communications. Below are a few examples:

INSULATOR - is derived from the Latin word "insula" which is defined as an island or "thing surrounded by" something else. It's not hard to picture an insulator as an island but that word "thing" really bothers me. It reminds me of the time my mother asked if I still collected those "glass thingies."

COPPER - from the Old English "coper" which was from the Latin "cuprum" which in turn was taken from the Greek "Kyprios," or the island now known as Cypress. In ancient times the metal copper was popular with the citizens of this beautiful isle.

CABLE - comes from the Latin "capulum" meaning rope. Eventually only large ropes or hawsers were called cable. We find the term cable used to describe a unit of distance and who hasn't heard of Western Union Cable.

TELEPHONE - from the Greek "tele" meaning far and "phone" meaning sound. It was used many times to describe various apparatus for the transmission of information prior to it's application by Alexander Graham Bell.

An interesting aside to the above are the words written by Bell in a letter to Elisha Gray in 1877. "I christined my apparatus 'The Electric Speaking Telephone' but the world has abbreviated it to 'Telephone" alone."

DIAL - from the Latin "dialis" meaning daily. It was used to describe the face of a timepiece and the resemblance probably led to its use in telephony.

OPERATOR - a moniker borrowed from the telegraph operators who in many cases were the first telephone operators. This came about due to the fact that many of the earliest telephone switchboards were located in the local telegraph offices. It became apparent that it was uneconomical to use "highly skilled" and well paid telegraph men in this way, so boys were hired to perform this "menial task."

Girls soon replaced the boys and at this point there was a movement to alter their title to "switcher." Many telephone companies and subscribers alike used this word to describe the operator and her duties. Because her job was to switch telephone connections it made sense but not with the operators themselves. They were in receipt of frequent comments by jokesters who enjoyed altering the name from switchers to swishers. Just think, if it had not been for vanity, you could dial zero today and be greeted with, "Switcher, may I help you?"

MA

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