taper and Bic

[Joe Pickett]

Just a follow up to Frank Abate's message on the jargon of competitive swimming
posted a few days ago (which I no longer have at my fingertips), in which he
discussed the terms "Bic" meaning "to shave the body so as to reduce water
resistance in a race," and "taper" which means "one of a series of gradually
shorter intervals done in practice in preparation for a meet."

The idea of the taper is to stay in peak condition but at the same time rest
your body so that it has enough energy to deliver a peak performance at the
crucial time.

Frank remarked that neither of these terms deserves to be in a general
dictionary.

While that may be so, I would suggest that taper is in a different class from
Bic.

Taper is a basic training term, and is used in other sports like running and
cycling, whereas Bic is swimmer's slang for "shave" and seems very limited to
areas that smell of heavily chlorinated water.

Taper has been around for a while.  It was in use in the 1960s, when I was on a
swim team. For more on taper, see

http://www.sportsci.org/news/traingain/taper.html