Down with this euphemism!!! A club is not a 'baton'!!!

I'm not real sure, but I think your meaning derives from baton in the meaning of a club. I'll have to withhold my support till someone takes time to check it out in the OED.

So, what's she doing?

Down with this euphemism!!! A club is not a 'baton'!!!

well sure, but you can't have a decent club with out bacon

I don't know about elsewhere, but certainly in British English law enforcement terminology, a baton is the name that those sticks are given.

Faced with a hostile crowd, a police riot control squad may carry out a 'baton charge' and I remember that during the Northern Ireland "troubles" the army and police used to fire these things called "baton rounds" (rubber bullets) at rioters. They also used to fire tear gas at them and when questions were raised about the use of gas being against the 1925 Geneva Convention, the British Government said that it wasn't a gas, it was a "smoke" and therefore OK. The newspapers and TV carried on calling it "tear gas" however.

The word 'baton' is a neutral term that just describes the shape (cylindrical) and method of deployment (held in the hand). Neutral terms tend to be preferred by news organisations for various reasons, ostensibly to do with not being seen to take sides. I take your point that using official euphemisms is in fact taking the side of the authorities.

Good luck getting any news outfit to listen to you.

My point, con, is that to most people the use of the word 'baton' conjures up (quite unconsciously) images of an instrument that is efficient but somehow harmless. This is not the case with so-called police 'batons'. They can break bones and have, on occasion, done so. They are, quite plainly,clubs. In the US, I remember as a kid, hearing these things frequently referred to as 'night-sticks' or 'billy-clubs' or 'police truncheons.' But that's not p.c. these days. We sanitize everything to put the best face on things. We refer to the bombing of villages and killing of civilians as 'pacification', to willful negligence in selecting legitimate military targets as 'collateral damage' and on and on and on. The use of 'baton' for 'club' or 'truncheon' is a small thing; but it's my peeve du jour.

You hung with kids that used words like truncheons? I'm very impressed.

It wasn't the kids called 'em truncheons. It was a word you heard on the radio, saw in newspapers. I'm talking about the 1950s.

I have no opinion on this. My impression, probably from an early habit of reading brit mysteries/police procedurals is that baton was the given term for the, uh, thingy. I'm too lazy to look up derivation or even deviation.
Thingy is a term much used by an old colleague of mine, but I think she picked it up from someone else's speech. Hard to get rid of the word in my brain - it crops up once in a while, like a popping weasel.

My dad was a drum major in college, after he knocked out his front teeth and could no longer play French horn. He kept his "baton" in the rafters in the basement. As I remember that sucker, it was something like five feet long, made of steel, with a ball on the end probably six inches in diameter, and HEAVY. You could knock over a horse with one swing of the "baton". Two swings and you could probably knock over a Humvee. Police night sticks are little bitty popsicle sticks by comparison.

"Baton' for the police tool is the correct use and, most likely, the original use before it became synonymous for the whippy little stick used by conductors.





Joe(Who's kidding who?)Nation

I looked up baton in Webster's. First definition: cudgel, truncheon, specifically a billy club.

Not a euphemism, Andy. A club is a baton.

Aw shucks. You guys are ruining one of my fave pet peeves. Now I can't call NPR and lodge a complaint. I hate to hear a report of police using batons. It sounds like a high school band rehearsal instead of an onslaught on demonstrators or whomever.

Only to you; everybody else knows what a police baton is and can imagine what one does.

You're right, of course. Anything pertaining to language tends to be quite subjective.

Now that looks like a horrible blt. (bacon lettuce tomato sandwich_

Then I'll start a campaign against calling police electric cattle prods tasers.

A gang of NSW police recently electric cattle prodded a young Brazilian man, suffering from a drug induced psychosis, to death.....after he was already cuffed.

And afterward, no doubt, someone said,

'oops.'

We had a fellow get tased badly at UCLA once. I think it was me who started a thread on it, long ago.

I don't speak for ucla, was around there a lot, and am still interested, not an alumni type, though I am aluminous. I just like the place. I have an old sweatshirt, I suppose I'll have to wash it soon, once a year.

From what I gather, tasing is not related to tickles.
Well, obviously.
It seems to me that action by the taser is a response to stress the taser is going through.
Of course, no fun for the tased.

In short, I agree with Dlowan that tasing is a tame sort of name.

I think of Baton Rouge, meaning "Red Staff or Red Stick"

Maybe it was red with someone's blood.