plug-in

[Mark Mandel]

rgh:

"rat-tale" -"rat's tale" -cody -zapper -"suite life"
(with exclusions for a couple of obvious multi-hit irrelevancies in the
first 50)
14,500
Where I could tell from the snippets, the first snippets all seem to be
"tales", i.e. stories, of one kind or other.

"rat tail"
376,000

The tails have it.

m a m

On Sun, Sep 5, 2010 at 6:28 PM, Mark Mandel <thnidu at gmail.com> wrote:

> I'm used to seeing "rat-tail", as in "a long stringy hairless appendage to
> something", rather than "rat-tale". A case of Pied Piping, perhaps?
>
> m a m
>
>
> On Sat, Sep 4, 2010 at 1:12 PM, Victor Steinbok <aardvark66 at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>>  A part of the problem is that the statement seems to imply that one
>> plugs the computer into the adapter. This appears to defy normal
>> interpretation. But it also suggests another physical ambiguity.
>>
>> Most laptops--Dell excepted--have a two-part connection to AC. There is
>> a "brick"--the transformer--with a "rat-tale" and a separate cable that
>> connects to the wall. The rat-tale plugs into a jack on the laptop and
>> the wall cable plugs into the brick /and/ into the wall. AFAICT, the
>> usual interpretation is asymmetric--you only plug X-object's "plug" into
>> a jack or socket (AKA "receptacle").
>>
>  ...
>

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