Talk:duck tape

The first example of duct tape I've found is from an advertisement in a newspaper in Wisconsin in September 1965. There are lots of earlier examples of duck tape in the same archive that date back to the early 1940s (and the Oxford English Dictionary has found one from 1902), which might suggest that it’s the older form. But that’s misleading. This duck tape isn’t the triple-layer, tearable, silver, sticky-backed stuff but plain cotton tape. The material has been called duck for four centuries, though it was originally made from linen, not cotton. It was a lighter and finer material than canvas, often used for seamen’s trousers and sometimes for sails on small craft. Duck tape was widely used at one time for the vertical binding tapes of venetian blinds. There’s nothing in any records of usage in historic databases or in the entries for both terms in the Oxford English Dictionary that suggests what the original name of the adhesive-backed material might have been. From here on I can do no more than relay and comment on accounts that have appeared on various Web pages and in a column by William Safire in the New York Times in March 2003. All tell the same story (so much so that they arouse unworthy suspicions). The tale is plausible, though I can’t prove it and there are some worrying loose ends. The original material was developed, it is said, by the Permacel division of Johnson & Johnson in 1942 for the US Army as a waterproof sealing tape for ammunition boxes. The tape proved immensely versatile and was used for all sorts of repair purposes on military equipment. These facts come from Johnson & Johnson’s historians, so ought to be accurate. But the story goes on to say that because the fabric backing was made from cotton duck and perhaps because it repelled moisture “like water off a duck’s back”, it became known to soldiers as duck tape. However, there’s no known use of duck tape in any document of the Second World War that anyone investigating the matter has looked at. A column by Jan Freeman in the Boston Globe in March 2003, partly in response to Safire’s, implies that the story about the name duck tape might have been a folk etymology passed on in good faith by employees of Johnson & Johnson. Otherwise, we have no information about what Permacel, or the US Army, called the material. Some time after the War, it is said, engineers begin to use the tape to seal the joints in air-conditioning ducts. This tape was manufactured in the same way, though to match the ducting it was coloured silver rather than the green of the Army version. Because of this use, it became known informally as duct tape. Duck tape is a trademark of Henkel Consumer Adhesives, dating from 1982, who sell it under that name in several countries. John Kahl, the CEO of the firm, was reported by Jan Freeman in the same article as saying that his father chose the name after noticing that duct tape sounded like duck tape when customers asked for it. (The collision of the two ts in the middle of duct tape causes the first one to be lost by a process called elision.) The term duct tape has never been trademarked, though several compound terms that include it have—it looks as though it had become generic before anybody thought of registering it. Apart from a one-off instance in the Oxford English Dictionary of duck tape from 1971 (which looks like a case of the duct—duck elision), I can’t find duck tape in the adhesive sense until the 1980s. My view is that the original name was duct tape, given informally to it by heating engineers post-war, and that the duck tape version is elision in rapid speech, later capitalised on by a manufacturer. But, as things stand, nobody knows for sure. As etymological asides, the tape has also been called ninety-mile-an-hour tape or hundred-mile-an-hour tape (because, it is said, you could drive a vehicle repaired with the stuff at those sorts of speeds without problems). A closely similar material used on television and film sets is called gaffer tape. This gets its name from the chief electrician, the gaffer, because one of its main uses is to hold cables in place, though it has many others. (In general, a gaffer is the boss of a crew, a foreman or similar person, a name which derives from an English term of respect for an old man that's most likely a contraction of godfather.) The term gaffer tape is of similar age to duct tape, being first recorded in the 1970s. http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-duc4.htm - 10k


 * The Duck Products company itself explains that it took the name "Duck Tape" from the earlier term "duct tape," according to its own account on its Duck Tape Club site. They don't even call it "duck tape" generically: they call it "Duck® brand duct tape" or, informally, "Duck Tape". They would know, wouldn't they? &#8212;69.143.191.250 11:51, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Anyone who has known the real back story of a word Safire has expounded upon knows that he is an idiot. I'd give him absolutely zero credibility. (The case I know personally is chad; his etymology, published in the aftermath of the 2000 US elections, was totally urban legend. I was using the term chad in 1972; we knew exactly where it came from ;-) You notice he is forced to keep saying he can't cite his theories.

Duct tape was called "duck" tape sometimes as an error, and sometimes with intentional humour. I know I laughed the first time I saw Henkel's product with the cute yellow ducks. (Some marketing genius somewhere!)

In any case, we know ducks hold the universe together. Robert Ullmann 14:01, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Rfv-sense: Duck brand duct tape. &#x200b;—msh210℠ (talk) 17:03, 6 January 2011 (UTC)
 * What does this even mean? Mglovesfun (talk) 13:27, 7 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Duck seems to be a brand of duct tape, that's probably what it means. This doesn't mean that it should be a Wiktionary sense. I think it shouldn't. --Hekaheka 13:36, 7 January 2011 (UTC)
 * On what basis would it be excluded if it is attestable? Any particular slogan, principle, policy, or practice? We might deem it a common misspelling. But it seems to be a misunderstanding of whether or not the name duct tape preceded Duck tape/Duck Tape, as it did by 1-2 years apparently, the misunderstanding building on the homophony in many instances of "duck tape" and "duck tape". DCDuring TALK 17:36, 7 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Above is suspect at best. World Wide Words reports this. DCDuring TALK 03:28, 8 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Certainly shouldn't be uncapitalized, and would need to need WT:BRAND. Mglovesfun (talk) 17:57, 7 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Of course we need duck tape, but does it require two senses? Are senses #1 and #2 separate? --Hekaheka 23:58, 7 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Yes, #2 is Duck Brand duct tape, and #1 is just duct tape. #2 is certainly needs WT:BRAND, and I doubt it can pass. The first sense The Oxford dictionary of American usage and style labels as a "mistaken phrase" that "has become quite common"; it passes WT:CFI handily.--Prosfilaes 02:49, 8 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Good, nobody ever disputed #1. --Hekaheka 05:05, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

RFV failed, sense removed. —Ruakh TALK 19:40, 12 February 2011 (UTC)