dykes (the tool)

[Arnold M. Zwicky]

from mark liberman on Language Log:

   http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002333.html

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... Maybe Dykes on Bikes could re-gloss themselves as the Diagonal
Cutting Pliers on Bikes?...

And curiously, there wouldn't be much dictionary evidence to bring
forward. Dykes (I guess that's the spelling) in the meaning of
"diagonal cutting pliers", isn't in the AHD, M-W Unabridged, the OED,
or Encarta.

I think this is really strange. As far as I know, dykes is the
standard American term for this ubiquitous and useful tool. In my
experience as a child working on bicycles and later cars with my
friends, as a mechanic in the army, and hanging around electronics
technicians at Bell Labs, "dykes" was as common as a term as hacksaw
or chisel. I mean, what else would you call them?

I say "them" because as a tool term, dykes is always plural, like
scissors. And similarly, the derived verb loses the -s. For example,
if you remove a component from a circuit by cutting the connections,
you "dyke it out" (though I've just discovered that Google has quite
a different notion of what this phrase means).

Of course, the derived verb is also missing from all the dictionaries
I've consulted. Either I've slipped in from some parallel linguistic
universe, or the profession of lexicography is falling short in the
domain of tools.

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