Total Members Voted: 18
Voting closed: October 12, 2006, 01:24:25 AM
At the risk of pushing this very entertaining conversation into the realm of the oddities of the English language; another interesting point would be how people tend to use knife as a synecdoche. Since the knife blade is one part of the whole multitool. Even people who use and carry MTs a lot tend to drop into some short-hand by asking you to hand them "your knife" or "the knife" when they are pointing or referring to a MT with a dozen functions.
A SAK is the mother of all multitiools!Enough said!
Multitool is a very broad term and includes bike-tools and oscillating tools as attachedI suggest the following simple terminology, time to rip off that band-aidA pliers based multitool (like the Spirit or the Wave) is a Letherman independent of manufacturer.A folding knife with multiple implements that are not all blades is a SAK If it only has blades, it is a pocket knife** unless you are in Switzerland, there everything is a pocket-knife, we do not discriminate
Who came up with the term: multitool? And why?! Besides marketing purposes!? Another thing. From what i know, a SAK was called schweizer offiziersmessers and is being called schweizer taschenmesser. Not a schweizer militärmesser. So, i think everybody should check that first. Who came up with the names, when and why.
@Mr. E ..... Well that is how the whole of the world speaks/thinks - apart from CH !!Well actually not 'SAK' - I always referred to it as a Swiss Army Knife - maybe also other folk did too? - I carried a 'SAK' for decades, but never knew the term SAK until I came here
Is a multitool- an implement that has multiple functionsOR- an implement that is comprised of multiple tools?
Nope, the Romans did it first
I do have some questions. It is very possible that american gi's durring ww2 and later came with the sak translation. It is. But... they could have translated directly into swiss pocket knife. On the other hand, i'm not sure how much us troops were involved with swiss troops, due to the fact that the swiss weren't involved on a military level in ww2. So... these 2 are my main question marks. Then. Tim Leatherman marketed his first product as: pocket survival tool. Yeah, it was a hype and it still is that "survival" bull so maybe the term multitool just came up one day. For me, even my gerber shard is a multitool. It is a single piece of metal with different tools. The bike keys that had different uses are also a multitool, in my view. So, a swiss pocket knife, if it has different tools and not only a blade, is a multitool in my oppinion. It is just a word in the end, and words may have actually different meanings, for different people.
Hype is a strong word... they marketed the PST with his story about the broken down car in Amsterdam and needing a set of pliers when he already had a "pockeknife". Part of the nostaligia of the PST for me .... along with other tools by Leatherman and Gerber... was how many of us were sent off to university with one of these. Survival in the realistic sense... fixing your car in an unfamilar location.... opening a can of soup at 2AM when you're working on your thesis. Survival in the realistic sense.Anyway... knowing a bit about American English ... it makes sense that upon returning to the US with some of these momentos of Europe we would call these a Swiss Army Knife instead of a Swiss pocketknife. To them, it wasn't just something that all the Swiss people carried, at the exclusion of every other country. It was something that the Army carried. We weren't interested that the farmers and the plumbers and the bankers carried it too. We were interested that this little tool that the military in Europe used.... that we had previously used in the Boy Scouts of America as nothing more than an implement to whittle some sticks or fix a lantern..... was so surprisingly useful if you have a little ingenuity that the Swiss Military used it too. You may know that in America, we speak in a militaristic flavor all the time, when we want to convey a sense of "grit" - "an army of police officers, the war on drugs, fighting diabetes, battling cancer". A single word adds a whole context and nuance to the sort of thing we are trying to achieve with a tool or a group of people, or a public policy, or a natural process, respectively. I wholeheartedly and passionately disagree with the following "It is just a word in the end, and words may have actually different meanings, for different people."Language may be the single most important invention of humankind. The 6,500 languages around the world.... and even the dozens of varieties of English... the fact that reading Immanuel Kant in German vs English will give you two very different ideas of what he is saying.... that a word ... such as "multi-tool" or "survival" can mean different things to diffferent people, but the same thing to others in different walks of like or corners of the world. "Just a word" can convey a metric ton of ideas, nuance, history, and understanding of humanity. Language is the single greatest Multi-Tool ever created.
Actually it kind was... considering Switzerland has a Militia and while it is probably not as popular among the young anymore, it is still pretty common to give your first service knife to your sweetheart (claim you lost it, then get a new one).
Perhaps it is an Army Knife that is Swiss, rather than a Knife that is used by the Swiss Army.
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