Generally, I call them "dammit!" cuz I bumped into one and got my shirt/pants/whatever a nice grease spot.
I feel like SUCH an idiot, calling them "grease zirt/zert" all my life. Sometimes you just wake up, and realize, "Man, it is just ALL wrong!"
Tom being raised on a working farm as I was we used the term all the time, guess it stuck, but I bow to your superior intellect...
Ditto. We always called them grease fittings. When they break they get called all those not so nice words that don't get printed in the dictionary.
This whole discussion got me interested in the history of the Zerk fitting so I did some Google digging: (from agriculture.com) In 1907, Oscar V. Zerk developed the first lubrication fitting that bears his name while considering the best way to reduce wear in equipment parts Also(some other weird site): "A Zerk is a grease fitting on a machine, a sort of hollow nipple, over which a grease gun is fit, and through which grease is applied to moving parts... Oscar V. Zerk was born in Austria but lived in the United States. In the 1920's, while working for the Alamite Corporation, he invented the Zerk fitting. He died in 1968 ... and probably slid effortlessly into his coffin." - Father Steve, at AWADtalk [July 1, 2005]
Ditto! Zerk - A name commonly used for a grease fitting. Named in 1922 for its developer, Oscar U. Zerk, an employee of the Alamite Corporation. A grease fitting is also called an Alamite fitting. Let's call it a tie, everyone happy now?
It is going to be very difficult to undo 30 years of calling it a "grease zert" and start using the CORRECT name of "zerk"... Thanks to all of you for helping me clear up this serious delimma. I will probably be able to sleep tonight not having to worry about it any longer. But I wonder where I got the "zert" from
Here we go....more about Oscar Zerk than anyone could possibly want to know... From a 1995 obituary of his 4th wife: ...The Vienna-born Oscar Zerk had made a name and money for himself in the automotive and lubricant industries, helping develop the first six-cylinder internal combustion engine in England and holding patents on lubricants, the Zerk grease guns and other lubricating devices. Among his more than 300 patents was a process of dyeing women's hosiery gradually darker at the knee and ankle so females with heavy legs would appear more shapely. Oscar Zerk had a ragged marital history one divorce, one annulment and a wife who died in childbirth but his marriage to Dorothy Rynders stuck. They remained married until his death in 1968. They lived in his grandiose home in Pleasant Prairie, which he bought from the family that founded the Jockey underwear line and remodeled into his own private museum. In addition to his art collection, items included dinosaur eggs, old temple gongs and petrified wood...
Its kinda like solder... My dad and everyone I've dealt with locally calls it "sawder", and can't spell it, can't pronounce it, but can buy it and work with it well.
I got muhsef one o' them thar "Sawderin' Arns" muhsef. Yup, uh humm. Shore dew. Sometimes, when I'm thinking 'bout sump'n else instead of whut I'm posed to be done doing, I forget that the screwdriver part is hot-hot-hot and I burn the far outta my fangers. I hate it when I burn the far outta my fangers. Man, that hurt-hurt-hurts.
