We'd call them "boltcutters" - not "a boltcutters" or "some boltcutters", just "boltcutters" (like trousers (although I am led to believe (by the Guardian's fashion chappies, who may well be winding me up) that in certain very on-trend circles, it is correct to refer to "a trouser", as in "he cuts a very fine trouser")).
If you were asking where they were, you'd say "Where are the boltcutters?"
I will ask you what I didn't ask brixtonbrood though, which is re the analogy with trousers: although you may talk about "trousers" in the abstract, if you're pointing at an example you would surely say "that is a pair of trousers" rather than "that is trousers"?
Probably "Do you have any boltcutters?" However, given that we've managed a cumulative 86 years without ever needing to cut a bolt, it's not a question that we've ever had to consider before. (Still, it's a useful thing to have prepared, just in case we come across Paul Dacre tied to a chair with his fingers left free.)
And I should have mentioned earlier, Henry is either a steam engine or a vacuum cleaner, but not boltcutters.
That seems reasonable enough, and would also cover things like shears and secateurs which similarly consist of two alike pivoted parts. But are there any exceptions?
Interesting! Are there other domestic objects that fall into this category of different names depending on whether you're looking at / visualizing them or not?
By way of additional detail to my answer: although I'd use "boltcutter" myself (by analogy to can opener), I wouldn't think it weird if someone said either "boltcutters" or "pair of boltcutters" (by analogy to scissors).
The workshop downstairs call these shears (a pair of shears as they are like grown up scissors). They are sometimes referred to as boltcutters (as people above have commented) but this is frowned on as if you use them to cut high tensile steel bolts it deforms the blade and you have to throw them away. I
I'd usually refer to them in the plural, and usually as a pair or a set. I can imagine situations where I might say that I need "a bolt-cutter", in the sense that I need a device that will cut a bolt, irrespective of whether it looks like your picture.
I might also refer to them as bolt-croppers, should the fit take me.
I hadn't actually thought of it as a northern term, but you identifying it as such gives me a warm fuzzy glow in the Yorkshiremost recesses of my heart!
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undyingking) wrote2008-08-25 11:51 am
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If you were asking where they were, you'd say "Where are the boltcutters?"
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Though my "our cumulative years" is higher than
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No idea why - other than Arithmetic Fail - but this is a lie.
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And I should have mentioned earlier, Henry is either a steam engine or a vacuum cleaner, but not boltcutters.
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If I was looking at it, or had a mental image for some reason, then I'd think it was like a pair of scissors, and thus call it a pair of boltcutters.
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'the' if there is only one set/pair in view, my/yours if there is a choice.
I would use 'some' interchangeably with 'a pair of' if I was asking for them in a hardware shop rather than looking for them in a diy warehouse.
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I might also refer to them as bolt-croppers, should the fit take me.
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Henry, if I was told they had been named.