When is Flashlight not a Flashlight?

Size15's

Flashaholic
Joined
Aug 29, 2000
Messages
18,415
Location
Kettering, England
Question:
When is a Flashlight not a Flashlight?

Answer:
When it's a Torch!

Now being a Brit from the UK, a Flashlight is what an American calls a Torch. Using "Flashlight" in conversation here results in strange looks.

So this is what the Concise Oxford Dictionary of English, 7th Edition 1984 has to say:

Torch
(electric)~, electric lamp with battery etc. in portable case; (fig.) source of heat or illumination.

Flashlight
(1)flashing light used for signals and in lighthouses,
(2)illuminating device for photographing by night etc.,
(3)*electric torch.

So maybe if anyone bothers to read this, they'll understand a bit more why we call a flashlight a torch!

Al
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lightlover

Flashlight Enthusiast
Joined
Feb 28, 2001
Messages
1,901
Location
London, UK (Parallel Universe)
Weren't the earliest *lights* momentary only, i.e. Flash-Lights, as Statesiders decided to call them ? (And at the time, principally marketed as a way to sell batteries, apparently.)

Yeah, Al, I'd never regularly heard a torch called a flashlight before CPF. Also, way back in the time of Socrates, they were calling their hand-held illumination units TORCHES !

Lumenaddict, you can be a Honorary Brit for the month of August (Only !).
Although the main benefit that confers is the Opportunity to buy American lights at around 3x the USA prices ......

lightlover
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lightlover

Flashlight Enthusiast
Joined
Feb 28, 2001
Messages
1,901
Location
London, UK (Parallel Universe)
Found it at last !
I couldn't remember what this topic was called. (Just terribly absent-minded, old chap ..... )

Anyway, I watched the excellent TV series "Band of Brothers" a few days ago. There is a scene in the episode "Crossroads", with dialogue something like this:

British Paratrooper, excitedly -
"(They were) signalling with a hand-held red torch !"

American Para coolly drawls -
"That would be a hand-held red flashlight"

lightlover
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mikep

Enlightened
Joined
Sep 22, 2000
Messages
305
Location
IL
I dunno- When I hear "torch" I always picture what you carry with your pitchfork as you head up as a mob to Dr. Frankenstein's castle to kill the hideous beast that's an affront to God and nature. Has this been mentioned before?
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