{"id":1488,"date":"2016-09-05T23:57:26","date_gmt":"2016-09-05T21:57:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wordpress-699740-3928655.cloudwaysapps.com\/?p=1488"},"modified":"2023-10-27T11:00:22","modified_gmt":"2023-10-27T11:00:22","slug":"stainless-steel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/valeriecollinswriter.com\/stainless-steel\/","title":{"rendered":"Stainless Steel"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n

So I had the idea of doing a kitchen-themed exploration of my language obsessions.<\/p>\n

What gadgets or utensils or whatever were worthy of note, linguistically speaking?<\/p>\n

Stick beater. I like that one.\u00a0 A beater in the form of a stick.<\/p>\n

Teardrop grater. This is a box grater with teardrop-shaped holes. Cool.<\/p>\n

And then\u2026 bam! Stainless steel.<\/p>\n

In Spanish we call it \u2018inox\u2019 i.e. acero inoxidable = unrustable steel.<\/p>\n

Who had the brilliant idea of calling it \u2018stainless\u2019?<\/p>\n

Over to Google and the history of stainless steel<\/a>, which I won\u2019t recount here (although you could definitely jazz it up for a screenplay: accidental discovery, early experiments and setbacks \u2013 edge-of-seat will it \/ won\u2019t it rust? countdown…)<\/p>\n

Suffice it to say that the new alloy was originally called rustless steel.<\/p>\n

And then one manufacturer, Ernest Stuart, upon testing the material in vinegar, suggested a more marketable name of \u2018stainless steel\u2019.<\/p>\n

It \u201csounds better\u201d said another link, which has disappeared since I did this research, and, given that they were trying to market knives, \u201cthe concept of \u2018stains\u2019 was more familiar to housewives rather than rust, corrosion, tarnish, etc.\u201d<\/p>\n

Of course it sounds better.<\/p>\n

It alliterates, that’s why.<\/p>\n

\"stainless<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So I had the idea of doing a kitchen-themed exploration of my language obsessions. What gadgets or utensils or whatever were worthy of note, linguistically speaking? Stick beater. I like that one.\u00a0 A beater in the form of a stick. Teardrop grater. This is a box grater with teardrop-shaped holes. Cool. And then\u2026 bam! Stainless […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3472,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,31,33],"tags":[30,32,34],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/valeriecollinswriter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1488"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/valeriecollinswriter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/valeriecollinswriter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valeriecollinswriter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valeriecollinswriter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1488"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/valeriecollinswriter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1488\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3473,"href":"https:\/\/valeriecollinswriter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1488\/revisions\/3473"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valeriecollinswriter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3472"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/valeriecollinswriter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1488"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valeriecollinswriter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1488"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valeriecollinswriter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1488"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}