"The Medway Handyman" writes:

Rob G wrote:
On 24 May, 09:42, "The Medway Handyman"
wrote:
Jon Fairbairn wrote:
"The Medway Handyman" writes:
Plumbers Mait actually. I've always thought that an excellent play
on words.

I don't get it. Why is using a pre 17C spelling so good? I'd
always taken it as simply a matter of changing it so that it
could be a trademark.

As in helping two surfaces to 'mait' or join together, the play on
words being 'mate' or assistant.

That as far as I can find is a load of cobblers. No book or on line
dictionary shows that. Are you pulling the proverbial or have some
justification for MAIT.

Now you mention it, I can't find anything online about it either. I've
always 'known' the word mait to mean join together, couldn't tell you why.
Must have imagined it.

It does mean that, but it means most of the other things
that mate does too, and the OED reckons that spelling it
that way went out of fashion in the 17th century.

[One of our engineering teachers explained why things should
be made to accurate tolerances rather than just having, eg,
holes drilled straight from one thing into the other by
saying "You don't want a lot of mating parts going round the
factory".]

There is/was a pub Croydon way called The Plumbers Mait, dunno where that
came from.

Is it a very old pub?

--
Jón Fairbairn
http://www.chaos.org.uk/~jf/Stuff-I-dont-want.html (updated 2009-01-31)