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Chris -- 2018-04-11
This one is rare, but charming.
“Love nuts” instead of “lug nuts.”
Someone wrote me a year and a half ago that he hard a young woman ask for “love nuts” in an auto store, but I only just now got around to researching it.
“An example of that would be tire changers. They have to be accurate in what they do, you know, five off, five on, with the love nuts”
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/ … se.01.html
“Over-tightening love nuts will cause warped rotors from everything I’ve heard on this board in the past.”
http://tl.acurazine.com/forums/archive/ … 25856.html
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Sorry brians, I can’t easily find any examples with “love nuts” + tighten+wheel+auto. It’s funny, that’s for sure, but I don’t think it would qualify as an eggcorn. To tell the truth, I have no idea how anyone could get “love” from “lug”. Maybe some sort of assignment to males by females regarding all things mysterious involving cars and passion?
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I remember a long time period in my life in which I could NOT figure out what people were saying when they said “lug” in that phrase.
I could not figure out how you were “lugging” anything when you were tightening or untightening those nuts. Sure, it was hard—they were on there pretty darned tight— but you weren’t “lugging,” you were twisting, turning, jumping on the wrench, kicking it, pulling on it, pushing on it—no “lugging.”
It’s not like I ever READ about them, voracious reader though I was. It never showed up on the cereal boxes, sci fi novels, newspapers, magazines, that I read.
I don’t know what I thought it was—“lud” or “lub” or something. But I couldn’t make those make sense either. It sure didn’t make sense as “lug.”
I’m not sure I ever thought “love,” but I might have tried to invent something like, “they sure hug tightly”
I found just a couple of “lub nuts” using Google, and only two “lud.”
But I searched on “love nuts” and “tire,” and found a few of those—but at least one of them was a typo:
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Over-tightening love nuts will cause warped rotors from everything I’ve heard on this board in the past.
EDIT: Whoops, you know I meant lug nuts, but that mistake was too funny to correct and not mention. :rofl:———-
http://tl.acurazine.com/forums/archive/ … 25856.html************
and a sort of joke in an essay or fiction piece:
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But your tires are still locked because they have those special locking lug nuts. I think you need to go to a dealer.”
Locking love what?———http://www.hazelst.com/writer/carol_woo … g_nuts.php
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A transcription of a CNN piece—obviously the pit crew guy who spoke used the right words:
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PHIL HORTON, GANASSI PIT CREW COACH: An example of that would be tire changers. They have to be accurate in what they do, you know, five off, five on, with the love nuts. And they have to be precise. ...
(the transcriber does it at least twice)————-
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/ … se.01.html
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Oh, and here’s one:
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http://www.chronicleforums.com/Forum/ar … 98097.html——————-
At a Pony Club meeting years ago, we taught a bunch of 12 year old girls how to individually, easily change a horse trailer tire with this setup. They all and their parents thought that the practice was time well spent-although one young girl thought that “lug nuts” were called “love nuts”.
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and on a MySpace blog
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And my Dad telling me he forgot to tighten the Love Nuts on my tires makes me feel all that much more insecure.————-
http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fusea … D=28489178
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Last edited by TootsNYC (2007-10-10 15:13:46)
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Here you go, Toots!
From Encarta:
1. projecting part: a projecting part, especially one by which something can be moved, rotated, or supported.
I had to do it for the both of us, find the definition that is. I suppose part of standard male indoctrination necessitates identifying said nuts as lug nuts. I never knew how they got that name, and I did not care. All I knew is that that is what they were. It’s funny how it’s different along gender lines.
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Oh, yes, a hard-to-research one. All the “I/we love nuts” cites, and then there seem to be a lot of products that go by that name; not to mention the euphemism or pet name for testicles.
What really heartens me is that Paul Brians, too, sometimes takes months and longer to research some bit of language.
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