terminology

Harry mac

Well-Known Member
Just to be pedantic: One of these is a bullet head, the other is a bullet.
 
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You are wrong ,
the fish is a Parrot fish. I think you mean Bullhead or Bleny.
If you want to be pedantic or pelagic(fish) at least get the species of fish right.
 
I disregarded the picture of the fish but assumed, rightly or wrongly, that he was referring to what we as kids used to call 'bullyheads' an ugly looking fish with a big head and mouth like a catfish.
I believe is a member of the stone loach family and often found when we were tadpoling or sticklebacking !!!
 
English is a language that serves a purpose. Why not make it serve our purpose.
Why not use the term bullet heads. If allows RFDs to put 'bullet heads' on our tickets when we reload. This allows the firearms departments to understand that we have not exceeded our ammo allowance. I do not think that the staff in firearms licensing depts wound understand that term 'bullets' refers to inert projectiles, but they think that they would understand bullet heads.
 
English is a language that serves a purpose. Why not make it serve our purpose.
Why not use the term bullet heads. If allows RFDs to put 'bullet heads' on our tickets when we reload. This allows the firearms departments to understand that we have not exceeded our ammo allowance. I do not think that the staff in firearms licensing depts wound understand that term 'bullets' refers to inert projectiles, but they think that they would understand bullet heads.

Actually with the stupidity of the Expanding ammunition debacle if you buy more expanding bullets than your ammunition allowance your breaking the law as they are under this stupidity classed the same as loaded ammunition or cartridges. When I pointed this out to Surrey back then and asked for the expanding bullets to be placed seperate they said they couldn't do this so upped my ammunition holdings to cover them.

On the other Linconlshire in their enlightenment have been steadlily reducing my ammunition holdings so I have had to place a lot of my stock in storage :rolleyes: yes even boxes of componant bullets so I remain within my ammunition holding limit :banghead:.

As for firearms licensing understanding their job you ahve no hope what so ever of that ever happening :cuckoo:. Where else can you work and no know what your doing and the powers that be declare that they don't make mistakes, and are in fact incapable of making mistakes :scared:.
 
English is a language that serves a purpose. Why not make it serve our purpose?
Why not? Because language is not there to serve 'our' purpose: is is there to serve the purpose of universally clear communication. While no-one would suggest that useage should never change with changing times, these changes usually gain credibility because they are useful and in fact do serve the purpose of clarity of communication.

Why not use the term bullet heads?
A few reasons of many:

1.The word 'bullet' already exists. Unless, of course, 'bullet head' means 'the head of a bullet' (e.g. the pointy plastic bit of a Ballistic Tip), perhaps.
2. It is against the spirit of good useage to use two words wrongly where one used correctly will do
3. To complicate things further, a cartridge case actually does have a head (where the headstamp is and from which the headspace is measured) whereas a bullet doesn't. In your terminology, a round would have a case head at one end and a bullet head at the other: is that a good thing?
4. If 'bullet head' means 'bullet', what does 'bullet' now mean? I suppose it is just a lazy slackers' term for bullet heads.

It allows RFDs to put 'bullet heads' on our tickets when we reload. This allows the firearms departments to understand that we have not exceeded our ammo allowance. I do not think that the staff in firearms licensing depts wound understand that term 'bullets' refers to inert projectiles, but they think that they would understand bullet heads.

What counsel of despair is this?
I suppose it is the Comprehensive 'education system' that encourages a tendency to approve of drift to the lowest common denomenator of ignorance; but to suggest that we collude in such wanton abuse of language simply because of the want of basic training among the FLD's clerical staff seems to me absurd. Even if one were so to collude, there'd surely be no reason for use of the ambigous terminology among firearms users?

In summary, it is bad useage which well as wasting words and betraying ignorance might cause misunderstandings, for example concerning 'head diameter'. The useage is to be deplored!

Just my humble opinion, of course!:)
 
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You are wrong ,
the fish is a Parrot fish. I think you mean Bullhead or Bleny.
If you want to be pedantic or pelagic(fish) at least get the species of fish right.

Hi Rod, I cross-loaded the pic in good faith, as the web site I got it from lists it as a "Bullet Head Parrot Fish". In the fish world I think the term "bullet head" is used coloquially for quite a few different fish.
Still, it stimulated a bit of discussion on a slow moving board:stir:
 
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