Sheath or Sheaf?

[Laurentius]

They never wore hard helmets Few pilots in any air force in WW2 wore helmets. Flying Helmet to keep head warm, to fix oxygen mask to and to hold headphones perhaps but not for protection. However, would it be unreasonable to try and keep alive until the target of a suicide mission is reached? I bet that modern suicide bombers look both ways when they cross the road.

I think that the hard helmet worn by pilots in these latter days is to protect them when they go through the canopy during ejection.

 

[santaman2000]

I think that the hard helmet worn by pilots in these latter days is to protect them when they go through the canopy during ejection.

Proper modern ejection systems have a sequence of events and the canopy fires before the seat. However the ejected crewmen often need protection when landing through whatever ground cover (trees, electrical lines, mountains, etc.)

 

[Goatboy]

Proper modern ejection systems have a sequence of events and the canopy fires before the seat. However the ejected crewmen often need protection when landing through whatever ground cover (trees, electrical lines, mountains, etc.)

Plus the amount of tech and gadgets built in need a hard shell to support them. Reading the specs on the helmet for the new F-35 is like reading sci-fi with its HUD, DAS, IR Camera links & MADL. Don't think it would sit on an old sheep-skin job.

Sent via smoke-signal from a woodland in Scotland.

 

[boatman]

Hwæt. We Gardena in geardagum,
þeodcyninga, þrym gefrunon,
hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon.
Oft Scyld Scefing sceaþena þreatum,
monegum mægþum, meodosetla ofteah,
egsode eorlas...

If you don't speak like this then you probably talk in some kind of mongrelized pidgin - right? That was proper English speech until it got all hacked up wasn't it? Language changes.

Reasonable point except that complication was introduced by the Anglo-Saxon elite's domination of the original English spoken in Eastern Pritain even before the Romans arrived. The spelling of the written words confuses the issue but" Hweat" is simply "What", for example.

Here is a list of English words that Wiki mistakenly claims are of Anglo-Saxon origin. I have given evidence for this before on this forum so won't repeat it but there is a fair amount of evidence if people like to Google. One significant point is that after the decline of the AS elite and their education system post Norman Conquest the basic English re-emerged stripped of its AS ornamentation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_words_of_Anglo-Saxon_origin

 

[oldtimer]

Well if you 'axe' me the proper one is "sheath." However I usually just carry my knife in a scabbard and avoid the whole controversy.

It must be a very big knife. A scabbard is a container for a sword.

 

[dewi]

Sheaf knife is, of course, perfectly correct...but only if referring to the small curved knives that thrashers used to cut the bindings on sheaves of corn.
Now if the thrasher had a sheath for his sheaf knife, would that make it a sheath knife or a sheaf knife or both? I've just tried reading that last sentence aloud and I do find it a bit of a tongue twister!

Ahh that might be where I've heard 'sheaf' before then... used to collect bales as a kid on the local farm, so possible the farmer had a sheaf knife.

 

[santaman2000]

It must be a very big knife. A scabbard is a container for a sword.

My various dictionaries say for a sword, dagger, bayonet, knife, or rifle. In use I've also seen shotguns carried in scabbards.

 

[Laurentius]

All scabbards are sheaths, but only some sheaths are scabbards, that is to say a sheath can be for other items than a knife. As for holster, where does that come from?

 

[falcon]

Sheath for a knife. As others have said a sheaf was the tied bundle of unthrashed corn harvested by the binder in the mid part of the 20th century before the invention of the combined harvester. Around me on the Shropshire/Staffordshire border sheaves were often known as "shoffs"...

 

[Goatboy]

All scabbards are sheaths, but only some sheaths are scabbards, that is to say a sheath can be for other items than a knife. As for holster, where does that come from?

Holster is Dutch in origin but it's etymology is unknown as far as I know.

Sent via smoke-signal from a woodland in Scotland.

 

[crosslandkelly]

I keep my knives in a quiver.

 

[johntarmac]

Regional accents are all fine and dandy for those that speak them, for the rest of us trying to phone our banks at a callcentre they're a frustrating nightmare.

 

[Goatboy]

Fit!?! Thons fechtin' toak far ah come fae.

Sent via smoke-signal from a woodland in Scotland.

 

[crosslandkelly]

Fit!?! Thons fechtin' toak far ah come fae.

Sent via smoke-signal from a woodland in Scotland.

Translation

What! That's fighting talk where I come from.

 

[Goatboy]

Translation

What! That's fighting talk where I come from.

I say! A chap from South of Bristol that understands the Northern vernacular. Astounding what?

Sent via smoke-signal from a woodland in Scotland.

 

[crosslandkelly]

I say! A chap from South of Bristol that understands the Northern vernacular. Astounding what?

Sent via smoke-signal from a woodland in Scotland.

Lang may yer lum reek!

 

[Goatboy]

Lang may yer lum reek!

Cor blame guv'ner, you're a right card and no mistake. A propah pearly.


Sent via smoke-signal from a woodland in Scotland.

 

[Geebe]

Lost in translation!

I lived in Essex for a while a few years ago (I'm Irish, from Dublin by the way). Yeah, three trees, and all that. Anyway, one day I went for a drive with a few mates and we decided to go to a place I had never heard of. I was driving.

"No worries, you can't miss it mate, it's one of the big exits off the A13" (I think it was)
So I'm driving along and next thing they're screaming at me from the back seat.
"You just drove past the exit, you muppet!"
"No, I didn't, that said Thurrock" (Can you tell where this is going?)
"Yeah mate, Furrock, that what's we said..."


Another time, I asked someone for the "jacks" and they gave me a fiver! I was actually looking for the toilet

 

[Goatboy]

(An Aberdonian comes back from his holiday in Paris.
His mate asks "Sandy did you hay a guid time loon?"
"I did that, think the waitress fancied me though like."
"Fi's that Sandy?"
"Weel at breakfast every day she asked me how mony eggs I'd like, like. I aye said "twa",... and ye ken fit? She aye gave me "three"!")







Badoom Tish! - I'll get my coat.

Sent via smoke-signal from a woodland in Scotland.

 

[crosslandkelly]

There is definitely a glitch in this thread.