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Sat 14 Feb, 2004 10:54 am
(1) Does "gear", which is so commonly used, means "great" or "leading" here?
Context:
Telecommunications gear giants Siemens and Huawei Technologies officially launched a joint venture to develop third-generation mobile communication products on Thursday.
(2)
Thanks Phoenix.
Have you seen one of the definitions of the word gear is an adjective meaning "wonderful" or "very good"? I got it in one of my dictionaries.
That's an uncommon slang usage.
never heard it used like that oristar - no one would understand your meaning if you used it in that way.
It was at Beatles-time; that slang came to America from England with them. Fab and Gear were good. Dollies or dolly-birds or birds were girls, and, as George Harrison taught us, that thing you sit on is a chair... well, it passed for wit at the time.
Those Mod-and-Rocker days are gone, and so is the use of gear to mean "very good"...
Hi Wy,
What is difference between Beatles-time and Mod-and-Rocker days?
Beatles time, about 1950-1970, but Mod-and-Rocker days?
Mods and rockers with an s - plural
Mods and Rockers were just before the Beatles time. Mods were fashionably dressed and rode scooters and rockers were leather clad and rode motor bikes, they had fights at weekends for some reason as they didn't like each other! I don't know if it was an American thing, it may have just been in England, the others will tell you about the USA.
Mods and rockers were definitely a UK phenomenon. I would guess the rockers owed a debt to American singers like Eddie Cochran, but the mods were clearly a British invention, I'm sure.
There were people in the US who looked a lot like the British rockers, and they probably listened to the same music, more or less. Nothing like the mods here, though...
Thanks Vivien and D'artagnan, now I've got a clear imagine for Mods and Rockers.
PS. D'artagnan, does your screen name read as Dartagnan?
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