Puzzle Description:

duct tape

#1: Aldege Cholette (aldege) on Jun 13, 2011

A definite must have.

where's the ducks?

Definitely, like Aldege said.

I thought for sure it was a tape measure.

agree with #4, it's the better answer

I think it's a snake that ate an elephant.

Or a hat.

le petit énigme?

Har-de-har-har.

For those who care, it was originally called Duck Tape, because it was made using cotton duck canvas (from the Dutch word doek, meaning "linen canvas"). As far as I can tell, folks just assumed it was meant to be "duct," because it's often used to repair ductwork.

I hadn't heard the duck etymology before, so I looked it up. There is a bit of a discussion about it on the talk page of its wikipedia entry. And I looked up this interesting link: http://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=en#!msg/rec.music.gdead/iqFjUpIXiZM/zIaPBlNUe8sJ -- a column from the Boston Globe in 2003.

While this column has a couple clangers of its own*, it raises the point that there are no attestations of it being called duck tape in the early years (around WWII). It seems that it would definitely be called by its correct name SOME of the time, and yet nobody called it "duck tape" in print.

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* One of the goofs is dismissing the cloth duck as the origin of the name because the tape wasn't made from duck tape, but duck broadcloth. However, if I made tape from denim, no one would doubt that it would be called denim tape.

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