Tilde Lowengrimm on Nostr: Do you ever really think about what words mean and where they come from? Think about ...

Do you ever really think about what words mean and where they come from?

Think about a kitchen sink. You're probably imagining three parts. There's a big basin or tub which can be filled with water. (Sometimes there's more than one of these.) Above the basin is a curved or bent pipe which dispenses water, with a little control handle to turn it on & off, and adjust the mixture of heated vs unheated water it dispenses. And then at the bottom of the basin is a hole for water to drain to the sewers, which can also be plugged to keep water in the basin.

So: which part of this setup is the "sink". Of course, the whole thing is, that combined device is what we talk about when we say "kitchen sink": "sink" is a synecdoche. But maybe if we think carefully, we might separate the parts one step: the "sink" is the basin & drain, while the water dispensing faucet setup is the "tap". But why call a basin a "sink"? Surely a "sink" is more of synonym for a drainage hole? Unless the term indicates that the basin is below the level of the counter which surrounds it? But that doesn't work either, because you can have a standalone sink without a counter, and it's still called a "sink".

And the drainage hole at the bottom of the basin. That's often called a "plug" as a shortening of "plug hole", that is: the hole (which can be plugged) is called a plug (a thing which stops a hole from being a hole). And the water-dispenser? That's called a "tap", presumably in reference to a similar adjustable dispenser put in the side of barrels to make it easier to dose out their contents. But the only thing it's "tap"ping into is a set of water pipes installed for this specific purpose. And when you think closely about it, you might conclude that a "tap" is actually the twisty handle bit which plugs and unplugs a pipe for dispensing water, not the spigot itself. But many kitchen sink "tap"s (that is to say: faucets) don't even have taps on them! They just have a single lever which you twiddle in different directions to control how open the heated & unheated water pipes are, thereby adjusting both temperature and pressure together with one interface.

So a kitchen "sink" consists of a basin (the "sink") with a "plug" (a hole) fed by a "tap" (a faucet with no taps). And people wonder why language is so difficult to learn.