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i came across the word jenny--a spinning jenny, in an artical about luddites..and went to look up jenny. why jenny i thought?
there is nothing! (well, i happen to have most of my dictionaries packed at the moment) Jenny in Webster's New World Dictionary list spinning jenny first, and then mentions jenny is used for female (a jenny bird)
and when i chech out spinning.. no jenny at all
Jenny i also paired with knitting, a simple knitting machine is a knitting jenny.. but it still doesn't answer the question of jenny.
and are there others? besides spinning and knitting?
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Carpal Tunnel
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under spinning-jenny, OED says that the reason for this use of the personal name is uncertain, but under jenny itself, "A female personal name, pet-form or familiar equivalent of Janet (or, by confusion with Jinny or Jeanie, of Jane), and so serving as a feminine of Jack. Hence, like Jack, used as a feminine prefix, and as the name of machines."
also, jenny was a locomotive crane, used for moving heavy weights back and forth.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Oh, great, just what I needed: pictures of terraced houses in Lancashire  . It's an interesting link, though. Here's a possible xplanation, from xrefer:
spinning jenny
A machine, patented (1770) by Hargreaves, for spinning a number of threads simultaneously.
It extended the principle of the spinning wheel by carrying several spindles (ultimately 120) vertically - the idea is said to have come to Hargreaves when he saw a spinning wheel, knocked over by his daughter Jenny, fall on its side. In the 1780s the spinning jenny began to be superseded by the mule for spinning cotton, but its adaptation to wool ensured its survival well into the 19th century.
Market House Books Dictionary of British History, © Market House Books Ltd 1987 My father always called a female mule a jenny.
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Carpal Tunnel
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>My father always called a female mule a jenny.
there ya go; jackass... jenny :)
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addict
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addict
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Thanks, Bill, for that link. My grandmother lived in such a house in Nelson, Lancashire, all her life and I can just remember staying with her during the war. I definitely remember the outdoor lavatory or 'long drop', as an occasional ball would disappear down it never to be retrieved.
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Pooh-Bah
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When it was first invented, Hargreaves spinning machine was know - as were most working implements - as an "engine". It did not take long for the "Spinning Engine" to become, the "Spinning Jenny", in much the same way that the Cotton Engine became the Cotton Gin.
The name was well in place before the spinning mule was invented - and so far as I know, the mule was never referred to as a "jenny", presumably to avoid confusion between the two.
It was called a "mule", incidentally, because it's technology was a "cross-breed" between two different sort of machine.
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Pooh-Bah
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as an occasional ball would disappear down it never
to be retrieved.
Something you wouldn't want to do twice.
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Carpal Tunnel
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i thought it might be a corruption or diminutive of engine, but i couldn't think of any other examples.. Cotton gin is perfect! many of the machine that came out of the industrial revolution got called engines, (analytical engine for example).
Didn't we do a thread on motor vs engine (over a year ago.maybe even over 18 months ago) i don't remember cotton gin or spinning jenny coming up there.
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Pooh-Bah
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In the C18 and early C19, anything man-made that was used in work was often referred to as an engine - even, occasionally, something like a spade.
I guess this probably goes back much further than the C18 (cf Shakespeare's rude mechanicals in The Dream.)
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