In lots of English fiction from 100 years ago, a handgun is called a revolver. Doesn't matter if it is a revolver or one of them fancy new semi-autos from Colt or Savage or imported from Belgium.
(And being when it was, those semi-autos were invented by...?)
Which bring us to our second point. In France a pistol was apparently call 'Le Browning', no matter what it was.
I found this interesting.
In Eastern Africa, formerly known as "British East", a truck is known as a "Toyota", regardless of its actual provenance, and in Britain, a vacuum cleaner is known as a "Hoover". Kind of like how Kleenex, Xerox Copies, and Aspirin took over from whatever generic names might have been assigned to the products by the lawyers.
ReplyDeleteSomewhere I have a German translation of James Thurber's "The Little Girl and the Big Wolf." The penultimate line was, "The little girl took a Browning out of her basket and shot the wolf dead."