"Toolkit" (was Re: Heard on "Law & Order: CI")

[Arnold M. Zwicky]

On Oct 26, 2006, at 11:33 AM, Jon Lighter wrote:

> One of my senseless peeves

man, are you peevish!

> is the endemic (that means "as a term-of-art') use of "toolkit" by
> anthropologists to designate "the range of implements and tools
> available to a (usually extinct) form of the genus _Homo_."  Roughly.

what (technical) term did they use before?  or did they actually just
say "range of implements and tools available to a form of Homo"?

"tool ensemble" would be possible, but i don't think it's been used.
"toolkit" strikes me as a nice choice.

>   Reading or, worse, hearing it turns me into a berserk primitive.
> Why ? Because I'm forced to picture apemen as plumbers and suburban
> crafts hobbyists.

hey, it's metaphor.  get used to it.

do you object to other metaphorically derived technical terms?

>   That's reason enough for it to be absent from the latest OED.
>
>   Latterly, I've heard or read it applied (with what unconscious
> perfection! ) to whatever writing techniques are possessed by a
> student of freshman composition.

i've seen that.  and a related use in the computer world.

arnold

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