like a zipper....
i am thinking about it, and as we invent new things, and new ways of moving things and people, we have to invent new vocabulary, or change meanings..
to me, like a zipper might be applicable to so something getting locked in (alternately) since to me, one clear cut aspect of a zipper is the idea of locking/unlocking.. since one they had merged, they were free to move to other lanes.. zipper doesn't work for the image (actual example) i had in mind.. it might work.
i suppose people piled up thing for eons.. but a "pile-up" is most definately like what happened in georgia last week.. when 100 odd cars and trucks crashed into each other over a one mile stretch of road.
It that universal?
i have heard that ozzie call highway convoys "road trains" and the first time i heard it, i understood the meaning, but didn't think it was clever enough to copy..
i like the english term "bleeper" for what we call beeper, cause about half the times it goes off, you want to say bleep-explitive deleted!
like the story about spec's, and how century old specifications about wagon wheels effect space travel, old words get recyclied to new uses. Taxi-- for instance..
Taxis, from greek for arrangement or division, got pulled into an mechanical device to 'arrange' a fare for a cab, so called taximeter cabs., shortened to taxicabs, to taxi's
and cabs for hire tend to move about slowly, looking to pick up fares-- and then stop to let people in or out, so airplanes taxi to and from the gate (going slowly, and stopping to let passengers in out out..
the root word, taxis, still is use in the meaning of arranged, as in taxonomy...
