duck tape?

[Jonathan Lighter]

The relevant passage from http://www.octanecreative.com/ducttape/DT101/index.html :


"The closest we got to a consistent story  [N.b. -- JL]  was  the [sic--JL] Johnson and Johnson Permacel Division who made the stuff for the U.S. Military during World War II. The original use was to keep the moisture out of the ammunition cases. Because it was waterproof, people referred to the tape as "Duck Tape." Also, the tape was made using cotton duck [Aha! -- JL] - similar to what was used in their cloth medical tapes. Military personnel quickly discovered that the tape was very versatile and used it to fix their guns, jeeps, aircraft, etc. After the war, the tape was used in the booming housing industry to connect heating and air conditioning duct work together. Soon, the color was changed from Army green to silver to match the ductwork and people started to refer to duck tape as "Duct Tape." (By the way, "Duck Tape" is now a registered trademark of Duck® brand (a division of Henkel Consumer Adhesives) in Avon, Ohio."

"The closest we got to a consistent story...."  How many times have we had to put up with that kind of uncertainty in the etymology racket, even with regard to relatively recent, widely known, and presumably heavily documented commercial terms !


JL


sagehen <sagehen at WESTELCOM.COM> wrote:
---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: sagehen
Subject: Re: duck tape?
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

>Margaret Lee wrote:
>
>> I was at Home Depot the other day and saw duct
>> tape spelled as "duck tape" on the package
>> label.
>> Has anyone else seen this spelling? Is it an
>> eggcorn?
>
>See:
>
>http://www.octanecreative.com/ducttape/DT101/index.html
>
>for a full explanation, which boils down to "Duck" as both the original
>name for the tape and now a trademark of Duck brand (a division of
>Henkel Consumer Adhesives) in Avon, Ohio. The tape got its name from its
>ability to shed water and the maker's use of cloth duck for a layer.
>
>The Wikipedia entry is worth looking at too:
>
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duct_tape
>
>John
~~~~~~~~~
This may be covered in the web sites John mentions (with my elderly browser
I rarely follow these up), but there is another probable ancestor of the
"duct/duck" tape that holds the world together today. This was a gray,
cloth tape with a water-based adhesive that was used to seal the joints in
furnace ducts conveying hot air up, and cold air back to the plenum.
A. Murie


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