Clamps or Cramps?

[Anonymous]

This has puzzled me for 30 years.

We have a G clamp...

... but a sash cramp.

Or is it G cramp and sash clamp?

Are the terms clamp and cramp interchangable?

Did they once have different meanings but have become homogenised over time?

Is there an English English/American English thing going on here?


Any ideas anybody?

Cheers
Brad

 

[Scrit]

Cramp is English, clamp is American. And if you're a Scot then it's a glaun (hope that's the right spelling). I generally call them G-cramps - just what I was taught

Scrit

 

[Lord Nibbo]

Cramp is English, clamp is American. And if you're a Scot then it's a glaun (hope that's the right spelling). I generally call them G-cramps - just what I was taught

Scrit

I'll go with that Scrit. A clamp is what farmers make for silage making :lol: trust the yanks to get it wrong :wink:

But where does the word Sash come from?

 

[Alf]

Gosh, we haven't had this one in nearly four years. :shock: :lol:

I favour clamp, simply 'cos cramp hurts...

Cheers, Alf

 

[Niki]

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A clamp is a fastening device to hold or secure objects tightly together to prevent movement or separation through the application of inward pressure. In the United Kingdom and Australia, the term cramp is often used instead when the tool is for temporary use for positioning components during construction and woodworking; thus a G cramp or a sash cramp but a wheel clamp or a surgical clamp.

niki

 

[promhandicam]

. . .But where does the word Sash come from?

Sash window making I'd always assumed but I could well be barking up the wrong tree.

Steve

 

[woodbloke]

Cramp for me, sash and G - Rob

 

[Inspector]

I've grown up using clamps, and it took me a while to realize that your G cramp was our C clamp.

Looks like we not only got the r and l mixed up but the G and C too! :lol:

 

[SammyQ]

In Norn Iron (Northern Ireland) a "clamp" is a mound of spuds, covered by straw and soil....


A "clampit" is a person, of either gender, who commits an act of terminal stupidity...


Am I cramping anybody's style?

 

[ivan]

SWMBO has a 2 vol gert fat dictionary (no wonder she always wins at scrabble) which says historically both words originally came to the UK from Germany - klempe and krempe.

'Clamp' apparntly originally meant a reinforcement - a band of iron round wood etc, (I can only think of an exhast clamp for the car's silencer box!) so the word 'clamp' for the tool, may have originated more in the building or construction trades.

'Cramp' seems to have always meant some element of squeezing or pinching, (or heaping up, this from the brickmaking trade, it says 'clamp of bricks', then used for clamp of spuds, etc) So presumably 'cramp' was used by the joyners, and the rigid guild system kept the two terms apart.

It would thus appear that it was mostly jobbing carpenters who travelled to the New World taking the word 'clamp' with them.......