The immediate impetus to starting this thread (so belatedly, yes) was the
debate about what constitutes a "splice". One can add to this issue the
similar one of how to distinguish "lashing" from "seizing" from "whipping"
-- there can be identical structures of the "<x>"ing material in different
circumstances (e.g., Common Whipping structure applied to a pair of
ropes to bind them); what should best make the distinction (if indeed
a distinction is worth making)?!
Then there is the problem of "turn" vs. "round turn": typically these
denote 180deg & 540 (=180+360)deg turns; so what should one
call something in-between, such as a simple wrap of a boundary line
on some stake? Here, we might see a way to constrain the use of
historical terms to well-bounded circumstances (where the in-between
doesn't arise), and establish some new term that incorporates the
exact degree for uses elsewhere (e.g., "a 720deg-turn").
"Bight" is used in odd ways. Nautically, it apparently connotes some
slight concavity in a shoreline -- hardly the sort of image that
leads to either of its cordage-wise uses: a sharp fold, or essentially
no fold at all but just some in-between-"SPart"/"end" position !
I'm going to venture that the former definition might be safely
lost to a new term that means "without an end", and the main
latter definition will be for a hard-folded, "doubled" structure (w/o
much attention to whether its ends ever cross (heretofore the mark
of a "loop"). Tying something "with a bight" can be easily seen
as making the <whatever> (e.g., Overhand knot) with a bight vs.
single strand, and thus ending up with two ends opposite an eye.
The Butterfly knot is not so well described, esp. by Alpineer's
nifty quick method of tying; that would go to the new term, of
"without ends".
"Loop" is so overloaded, I try to avoid it. Vice "loop knot" I've
used "eye knot" -- as I think that "eye" is pretty broadly understood
and without confounding additional connotations. One sense of
distinction connotatively between "loop"/"bight" I feel is that the
loop is more round & brief, the bight elongated with a "tip" or
"bight-end" (and, again, not a matter of (un)crossed ends).
Knot names are a well-established chaos, against which one should
not expend much effort. However, it seems worthwhile at least to
try to stem a furthering of the chaos at least in some cases: e.g.,
arborists sadly have come to see the "Fisherman's knot" as the
Scaffold knot" aka "Strangle Noose-hitch" or "Poacher's Knot"
-- with implied rationale that the "Double Fish." being this knot
with two such dbl.Overhand (Strangle) parts, and the latter has
just one, so ... . Given the well-established names here, it's worth
the effort to kill this particularly bone-headed addition, both for
the gratuitous new use of the name, and the rationale for it (which
rationale is not good -- not a good one to use, i.e.).
Where more precise naming can be established, IMO, is only in
some technical jargon, where likely long-winded, cumbersome,
and digits-employing identifiers might be established for use by
knots-focused study to be precise.
--dl*
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