819-1: Feedback, Notes and Comments

Following up First World problem in the Macquarie Dictionary’s words of the year, David Shapiro commented, “When I read that to my wife, she immediately countered with the one she had read online earlier today: ‘I have to write a check to my maid, but I can’t remember her last name.’” Bill Duncan commented on wine flu as a synonym for “hangover”: “I’ve never heard wine flu, but I have many friends who have suffered from severe cases of Napa Valley flu. Somewhat more elegant.”

My rather arcane piece about the origin of the technical term sipe for slits in vehicle tyres produced several replies that argue John F Sipe’s invention was better known than I had thought. Peter Rugg pointed me to a Wikipedia article on the Sperry Top-Sider shoe which says that its inventor, Paul Sperry, used the ideas behind Sipe’s patent to create it in 1935 (This may be the origin of the story about Sipe having been a warehouseman or sailor who cut slits in the soles of his shoes to improve their grip in wet conditions.) Judy Swink pointed me to a number of later patents which cited Sipe’s, the earliest being filed in 1936, though none before 1951 included sipe as a generic term. Peter Morris of the Science Museum in London found a 1937 work, Inventions and their Management, which deals with Sipe’s patent in some detail. All this suggests that the technical term may indeed be an eponym, though direct evidence is still lacking. I’ve substantially rewritten my piece on sipe.