Leyland's 'Titanic' Six-Wheeler

My colleague Clutchslip spotted this old Leyland Motors advert in a recent volume of Historic Commercial News (click to see a larger version):



Leyland's Titanic bus was introduced in 1927, a good 15 years after the sinking of the RMS Titanic.

I'm not sure that many manufacturers would name one of their vehicles 'Titanic' nowadays...

'No More Big Gaps'

The company behind the adhesive 'No More Nails', UniBond, also makes a foam filler called 'No More Big Gaps'. What a great name.

However while 'No More Nails' is a substitute for nails (in certain circumstances), 'No More Big Gaps' is not a substitute for big gaps.

Looking at it another way, 'No More Big Gaps' eliminates big gaps, but 'No More Nails' does not eliminate nails. It only eliminates the need for nails.

McCoy's Sizzling King Prawns

Yesterday, my girlfriend and I spotted a new flavour of crisp (AmE: potato chip): McCoy's Sizzling King Prawns.

From the name, my girlfriend got the impression that the crisps would be spicy. I didn't get that impression at all (after all, bacon sizzles but isn't spicy). So two questions:

• Would you expect a 'sizzling' flavour of crisp to be spicy?

• Have you ever tried McCoys Sizzling King Prawns, and were they spicy?

Nissan NV200: guess what 'NV' stands for

Nissan's new van is called the NV200. One of our news editors pointed out to me that the 'NV' part of the name stands for, er, 'new van'. Brilliant, huh?

I suppose it could equally stand for 'Nissan van' or even 'Nissan vehicle'.

In Nissan's defence, it would appear that 'NV200' was the codename the manufacturer gave to the van when it was still a concept vehicle. That's the thing with names – sometimes they stick when you don't mean them to.

(Picture courtesy of Roadtransport.com: 'Nissan to create new segment with NV200')

Word of the day: indentikit

Spotted in yesterday's The Guardian Guide:

How did a clutch of arty female electro acts end up being tipped as the future of pop? Blame Scouting For Girls, the Pigeon Detectives and the slow death of indentikit guitar music

'Indentikit': it's an adjective, and presumably a portmanteau of 'identikit' and 'indie' (an abbreviation of 'independent music') . Synonyms used in the article include 'landfill indie' and 'pseudo indie'.

I like 'indentikit' because 'identikit' is itself a portmanteau, of 'identity' and 'kit'. The OED Online's first mention of 'identikit' is from the Observer in 1961:

About forty police forces in this country are now testing an American device called an ‘Identi-Kit’, which is used to translate witnesses' descriptions of a person into visual terms.

So originally a brand name?

But back to the more recent 'indentikit'. Interestingly, it appears in the standfirst of the article but not the body copy - was it the sub's choice of word rather than the writer's?

Googling 'indentikit' throws up more than 5,000 results, but most of them seem to be accidental misspellings of 'identikit'. Googling '+indentikit +indie' gives 345 results, most of which predate the article in The Guardian Guide.

So this is a word that is new to me, but not newly coined.