www.alphadictionary.com

• spanner •

Pronunciation: spæn-êr • Hear it!

Part of Speech: Noun

Meaning: 1. A tool for manipulating nuts and bolts, a wrench (US), 2. A Y-shaped tool with two hooks, holes, or pins at its top ends that fit for twisting a receptive object.

Notes: Here is a widely used English word with definition No. 2, while the first definition is limited to those countries where British English prevails. This word is a lexical orphan.

In Play: A regular spanner is called a "wrench" in America: "To make the working man's toolbox lighter, Hadley invented a one-size-fits-all adjustable spanner." The British correlate to the Americans 'throw a wrench in the works' is 'throw a spanner in the works': "Horace Rumpole will very likely find a way to throw a spanner in the workings of this open-and-shut case."

Word History: Today's Good Word was borrowed from German Spanner "tightener", an instrumental noun derived from spannen "to tighten, stretch, span". Spannen comes from Proto-Germanic spannan, which also produced Swedish spänd "tense, tight", Dutch spannen "to tighten" and spinnen "to spin", English, Norwegian, Danish span, and English spin. All these trace their origins back to PIE (s)pen- "to pull, stretch, spin", source also of Armenian henum "I weave" and heni "to act, get tired", Greek ponos "hard work, toil", Lithuanian pìnti "to weave", and Latvian pīt "to weave". (Now a note of thanks to Chris Stewart, a regular contributor from South Africa of fascinating Good Words like today's.)

When I was in college and rode an English bicycle, I carried a set of spanners in case minor adjustments were necessary. But a monkey wrench is what one uses for pipefitting. They're different, or at least that's what I learned as a child.

"Spanner" demonstrates the limitations of idiomatic usages, even within a single language. "Spanner" is a word virtually no American would recognize. In 1965 John Lennon published a book of nonsense stories with the punning title "A Spaniard in the Works." The cover art consisted of a photo of Lennon in a faux-Spanish costume while holding a wrench. The title had to be explained to the American audience. A joke explained is not funny. The book sold poorly, no doubt a wrenching experience for Lennon, who was then at the height of his acclaim.

I gather that for the same reason, "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" is "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" in the US.