It seems like I'm not the only one to miss the meaning. Here's a "duo-tang" with not a tang in sight. I suppose, though, that you can forgive the company its expanding use of a brand name.
Tuesday, October 06, 2009
Duo-tang
All my life, I've been vaguely aware that there's something about the word duo-tang that I was missing. It seemed like such an odd English word. Then, the other day, my daughter brought one home and the meaning hit me: duo = 2, tang = tongue-like projection (you can see three of them in the photo below).
It seems like I'm not the only one to miss the meaning. Here's a "duo-tang" with not a tang in sight. I suppose, though, that you can forgive the company its expanding use of a brand name.
It seems like I'm not the only one to miss the meaning. Here's a "duo-tang" with not a tang in sight. I suppose, though, that you can forgive the company its expanding use of a brand name.
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4 comments:
In my limited experience, I think this may be a Canadian English word. I'm not sure about the UK or AUS/NZ, but in the USA, no one knows what a duo-tang is. Such objects are simply "folders" which is hardly specific, but perhaps more generally descriptive. It would be like finding out that no one knows what "jello" is and instead learning that they simply refer to it as "jelly" or "gelatin".
I didn't know. One more for the list.
I had never heard this term before, but according to Wikipedia, it's a proprietary name, and I'm not sure it makes sense to say that the owners of the name are missing its meaning …
You can't see it in the photo but each of those three tangs is actually two pieces of metal. They go through the holes in the paper then one folds one direction and the other tang folds in the other direction. Thus your paper is secured nicely in place and the 'duo' is explained. (At least that's the way they were when I used them growing up.)
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