Bicycle Terminology
Mon, March 30, 2020 I read a comment on a news article where someone described themselves as an “Avid Cycler.”
I’m sorry, if you call yourself a “Cycler” you are not an avid bike rider, which I think is what you were trying to say. The term is “Avid Cyclist.”
You could be an Avid Recycler if you collect old newspapers, and plastic bottles, but that’s a whole different story.
George Bernard Shaw once described England and The United States as, "Two countries separated by a common language." As well as using different words for the same object, people tend to make stuff up if they don't know the correct term. I read an ad on Craig’s List where a person selling a bicycle described it as having:
“Covers over the wheels, so you won’t get your clothes wet when riding in the rain.”
They are called “Mudguards.” In America most call them “Fenders,” which is also acceptable. At least we know what you are talking about. In this case I never would have known had there not been a photograph of said bike, sporting mudguards.
When I first came to the US in 1979, there was a whole different vocabulary for bicycle parts that drove me crazy.
People called a handlebar stem (Left.) a “Gooseneck.” If I ever saw a goose with a neck shaped like that, it was one sick bird.
A spanner was called a wrench, now some call it a spanner wrench. One of those words is obsolete, and back in the day, Americans would insist on calling a saddle, a “Seat.”
The fact that a saddle was attached to a seat post, or seat pillar in the UK, which in turn slid into a seat tube on the frame, was neither here nor there. I wasn’t around for that planning meeting.
Before we had freewheel cassettes, the old screw-on five and six speed freewheels were called a freewheel “Block.” Back in 1979 in the US they called them a “Cluster.” Talking of Freewheels, the opposite is a Fixed-wheel, not a Fixed-gear, and never Fixie, unless you’re a newbie avid cycler.
Some terms have never changed, Campagnolo was always abbreviated to “Campag” in the UK, in the US it is “Campy.” (In the UK Campy could be mistaken for a certain way of walking.) I never abbreviate the name, that way I am correct on both sides of the pond.
Tubular tires, (Or is it Tyres?) in the UK were “Sprints and Tubs.” Sprints referring to the sprint rims, and tubs being short for tubulars. In the US they are “Sewups,” which no longer drives me crazy, although it does make me a tiny bit uncomfortable.
Then the “Hipster” crowd started calling them “Tubies,” which like Fixies is kind of ‘cute,’ but what does drive me stark raving bonkers, was the hipster element referring to toe-clips as “Cages.”
They have always been “Toe-clips,” on both sides of the Atlantic. It was the one word for a bicycle part that didn’t get bastardized in translation.
They have been abandoned by most branches on the sport for clip-less pedals. (There is a clue, right there.) Anyone who calls them cages should be locked up in one.
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Reader Comments (20)
Tyres, Tires or COVERS, Chainsets, Cranksets. Twiddling or spinning as now So many that I have forgot over the years.
Thanks for posting this to educate newbies and even old timers who've led a sheltered life. Having started cycling in the UK in the 1950s, then coming to Canada in '56, I know the lingo and am still irritated by the Americanisms for terms already established in the old country many decades earlier.
I think Grant Petersen at Rivendell once coined "cycler" as a term to describe a "non-racer".
One of my pet peeves: "toe baskets"
I've never heard of "toe baskets", but I've seen clips and straps called called "cages". There's a whole lot of long-established cycling terms in the English language that have been missed or ignored by Americans and re-invented. Too many to list here. My pet peeve is "Campy" instead of Campag. Ans then there are the European tems, like bidon for water bottle, mussette for bonk bag, butt that's English vs. Euro, not American.
Double clangers?
...and don't forget the "central movement."
“Sew – ups” so called by those that can’t sew them up or even fix a flat on a regular inner tube.
The ultimate in overstatement.? “ Suicide Shifters” Aaagghh
I remember my first time in a shop that carried real race bikes when I was 12 (1969). Bought a Raleigh Sport (replaced by a SuperCourse two years later). They had Ciocc (brand new at the time) and Guerciotti. The salesman kept saying they had "all campy parts" and I thought it was just an adjective about the styling of them. Took a while to realize that Campagnolo was a company.
However they did refer to the "stem" that needed to be replaced on my Sport when I had them replace the handlebars with "drop" bars as I wanted a race bike.
Funny that I remember that.
Is anyone bothered by the term “Brifters”?
JetTexas,
Now you mention it, it bothers me, and the thought that I may have used it in the past bothers me even more. Shame on me if I did.
Dave
Actually, if you look at a silhouette profile of a goose, the neck and head look exactly like a stem.
The head being the part holding the bars. The neck at 90 degrees to it, fitting into the steerer tube.
You see a gooseneck.
Hoops or Rings
If a pedal is indeed "clipless", how does a rider "cliip into" said pedal?
Nothing to do with bicycles, but...
I was a railroad freight car repairman and car inspectors would inspect the cars after being received into the yard and\or before departing. Upon finding a defect they would mark the car with a "bad order" with the BO noted on the ticket and the car would be shopped. There were plenty of times us repairmen would have no idea what the defect was by reading the ticket. Especially if there was nothing wrong on the car but the inspector thought that something looked suspect.
If enough new guys decided that the new terminology was better, well it got easier to find the problem.
TonyP,
Good one, reminds me of my framebuilding days when I'd change an oxygen or acetylene cylinder, I'd mark the spent one MT with a piece of chalk, an old habit I brought with me from the UK.
An employee asked me what MT meant? I replied, " MT means it is "Empty" so we don't mix empty cylinders with full ones."
I still don't know if this is also general practice in the US.
Dave.
We marked them the same way. It's almost hard to believe that it needed explaining.
Couldn't agree more Dave - thank you. I was pleased to see that image of a handlebar stem that you use is a Cinelli 2A. Incidentally, do you ever hear from John Brown a gentleman from Worcester England who I was once lucky enough to know?
Here in Australia tubular tyres were called ‘singles’. No one I’ve met under 50 knows what I mean when I say it now. I refuse to call them ‘tubbies’, it’s ugly. Incidentally, I read somewhere that there was another tyre/wheel technology in the early days of cycling where the tyres were called singles, but I can’t recall where I read it, or what the technology was. Any ideas?
Singles ... now, why would "tyres" be called that?