M-T (matrxtech@sprintmail.com)
Wed, 23 Jun 1999 11:18:49 -0500
Christopher Bahn:
<<I was reading Bill Pronzini's short story "Stacked
Deck" last night, and there's a sentence in there about being
able to "loid" the lock on a window. It's obviously from
context that he's referring to breaking in, but I was
wondering about the etymology of this word. Or was it a
misprint, maybe?>>
It's short for "celluloid" - a trick for sliding a piece of
said material in order to unlock a door or window. Bernie
Rhodenbarr uses it frequently, and Block calls it "to loid"
too. I don't know how realistic the trick is.
Regards,
mt
-- # To unsubscribe, say "unsubscribe rara-avis" to # To unsubscribe, say "unsubscribe rara-avis" to majordomo@icomm.ca. # The web pages for the list are at http://www.miskatonic.org/rara-avis/.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.0b3 on Wed 23 Jun 1999 - 11:58:19 EDT