On Brookelynn Morris’ video instructions for our zippy new Supercap Racer kit, YouTube user hevyAccel makes a thoughtful comment:
You have to be more PC! They aren’t wire strippers! They are “exotic pliers!”
Thank you, hevyAccel — you are absolutely right. I am using the term “exotic pliers” from now on!
(Check out the kit– these things are fun!)
6 thoughts on “Honor the Exotic Pliers”
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I prefer to use a pair of dikes (“diagonal cutters” takes too long to say) to cut wire.
I was training an network cabling crew that comprised of two openly lesbian women, and got to the part where I explained “this is a pair of dikes” and realized what I had just said. I think that was the reddest I ever turned, while rapidly explaining the etiology of the phrase from diagonal cutters… Fortunately I think they were more amused at my coloration than offended.
It’s probably a good thing that we don’t use resistor color codes any more. The little phrase that’s stuck in my mind was never very PC, but perfectly engineered to stick in the mind of a teen boy, so I have to admire that.
I work with female engineers, too, which is a very good thing — we’ve been driving half the good minds out there into other careers for way too long.
Sorry, sticking with wire strippers…just try going to buy a pair of exotic pliers anywhere (try doing an Internet search). People get too wound up in finding offensive meanings in things that people say. I say if you do that, you need a vacation. Dikes are diagonal cutters, wire strippers are not exotic pliers. Are we going to start calling a screwdriver a rotary fastener tool?
I like “rotary fastener tool” — but first we should OK that designation with the Rotary Club to make sure they’re comfortable with it.
Traiteur Rabat Regal; Traiteur de ronome au Maroc
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