duck tape? gaffers/gaffer tape?

[Dave Wilton]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU]On Behalf
> Of Wilson Gray
> Sent: Monday, July 25, 2005 8:20 PM
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> Subject: Re: duck tape? gaffers/gaffer tape?
>
>
> FWIW, The Movie Channel once showed brief infomercials between movies.
> The one that featured gaffer's tape showed it looking a lot more like
> what I know as "electrician's tape" - smooth, black, stretchy plastic -
> and not at all like duck/duct tape - textured, silvery, non-stretchy
> cloth.
>
> Of course, that impression could have been merely an artifact of the
> (lack of) effort put into filming a two-minute time-filler combined
> with a non-hi-def CRT.
>

The infomercial was right. Gaffer's tape is electrician's tape and quite
different from duct tape. A gaffer is an electrician (not a set builder as
previously stated on this thread).

--Dave Wilton
  dave at wilton.net
  http://www.wilton.net