John Doe wrote:

inlina inlina gmail.com wrote:

On Jun 14, 7:37 pm, John Doe j... usenetlove.invalid wrote:

There probably are few people in the world who have never heard of
vice grips.

Umm, the generic name is not vice-grips, it is locking pliers or
lock-jaw pliers.

Very unlikely that is the name in Franklin's home country Norway. Even
if they don't go by the brand name "vice grips", they wouldn't use a
generic English term.

Therefore it is not the case that when you say vice-grips
that everyone in the world understands what you mean.

Highly likely that anyone in a non-English speaking country would
recognize "vice grips" before they recognized "locking pliers".

That's the issue.

In fact, more people in the world understand what you mean when you
say "vice grips" than they do when you say "locking pliers" or "lock
jaw pliers".

From the worldwide USENET archives.

Results 1 - 100 of about 8,930 for " Vise grips "

Results 1 - 100 of 658 for " Locking pliers "

Results 1 - 37 of 37 for " lock jaw pliers "

Vice-grips came from Irwin's trademarked product 'Vise-grips',

Of course it did.

and in typical American fashion it kind of evolved into a
semi-generic term for locking pliers..... much the same way people
use rollerblading for inline skating.

Or "ping-pong" for "table tennis", and so on.

The question was whether someone who claims a good understanding of
English terminology should know what "vice grips" are.

I'm from Sweden, and I wasn't sure what was meant by vice grips, but
when I saw the words "locking pliers" I knew what it was. But if my
understanding of the English terminology had been better, I would
probably have known the other term, also.

S.