Use of "gage" vs "gauge"

RussR

En-Route
Joined
Jan 12, 2011
Messages
4,007
Location
Oklahoma City, OK
Display Name

Display name:
Russ
I was reminded the other day how I often see the word "gage" in older POHs, when I would normally use the word "gauge". I assumed this was a common spelling in the 60's and 70's, when the airplanes were made.

However, I decided to google it a little, and found that the word "gage" is used much more recently too - for example, in the Cessna 172SP Nav III POH:

"After starting, if the oil pressure gage does not begin to show pressure"

and even the Cessna 162 POH:

"Fuel quantity is measured by two sight gages"

A quick search showed a lot more Cessna results than anything else. Piper did not seem to use, or not as much anyway.

I did find that "gage" is generally only found in technical or engineering writing (in addition to an archaic use meaning "challenge", sort of).

I've always used "gauge" and it would seem weird to write "gage".

Anybody know this history?
 
Dunno, don’t axe me.
 
I gauge by your use of gage that you are some sort of gadget person.
 
Gage is an obsolete word for something of value. Tpically back in the day a gage was thrown down to validate an impending duel challenge.

Gauge is a measurement or a measuring tool. Standard gauge railroad tracks gauge 4' 8.5".

-Skip
 
If you mess with the English language you will surely go to gaol.
'Gage' is perfectly acceptable, per the dictionary, but I don't allow it in any of the jet engine cert docs that cross my desk. I remove the 'u' from colour and add it back in to gage to make it right.
 
It was due to the lack of spell checkers in days of you’re...

(Ok fine, yore)


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
Cessna engineers are smarter than Piper engineers. POH is considered required equipment. Fewer letters means fewer pages which translates to a weight savings and a higher useful load.
 
Cessna engineers are smarter than Piper engineers. POH is considered required equipment. Fewer letters means fewer pages which translates to a weight savings and a higher useful load.

Amazing Germans got their planes off the ground during WW2, considering


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
The OED gives a terser but similar answer to Bell206. It's an American variant though considered non-standard.
 
I feel bad for people who have to learn our langauge. Most languages (French aside) are fairly direct in their spellings, IE, a word sounds like the way it is spelled with its letters (Hungarian, German, Russian, Spanish) .. it is only english where "I will read this" and "I have read that" are spelled the same but read differently.. there are many examples of that

..nevermind ridiculous spellings like "use the chalk to mark on the tarmac where the chock should go"
 
..nevermind ridiculous spellings like "use the chalk to mark on the tarmac where the chock should go"

I pronounce those word differently, don't you? I know spelling "chalk" when you mean "chock" is a common misspelling, but I figured that's what it was, not a result of the same pronunciation.
 
The word gauge does come from the French, so that's why it's funky.

At least gauge and gage are homonyms. Lose and loose (or my pet peeve, affect and effect) are not.
 
I feel bad for people who have to learn our langauge. Most languages (French aside) are fairly direct in their spellings, IE, a word sounds like the way it is spelled with its letters (Hungarian, German, Russian, Spanish) .. it is only english where "I will read this" and "I have read that" are spelled the same but read differently.. there are many examples of that

..nevermind ridiculous spellings like "use the chalk to mark on the tarmac where the chock should go"
Why is it easier to complain about our languages than languages that depend on you knowing if a word is male or female, or familiar or formal in order to get the spelling and pronunciation right.
 
In Vietnamese, everything is age specific, not gender specific. That is a tough concept for a Westerner to grasp. Typically, in a bar or restaurant scenario, you have an older Western male (anh) and a younger Vietnamese female (em). If the female were older, technically, she would be anh, and the male would be em.

But it isn't spoken that way. Spoken by and around Westerners, any male is alway ahn, and any female is always em.
 
Shall we talk about 'lose' vs 'loose'

Lose and loose are easy.

English classes drive me nuts. I had to take 3 semesters in college, because they were turning out illiterate engineers. Those classes drove me nuts, each professor had different rules for things like grammar and punctuation. No consistency.
 
Wenn Fliegen hinter Fliegen fliegen, fliegen Fliegen Fliegen nach.

That’s all I have to contribute.
 
The word gauge does come from the French, so that's why it's funky.
-beautiful *sounding* language, people, and country.. but the language itself is a raging disaster. Also, the math? 83 is four twenty three.. ugh

Why is it easier to complain about our languages than languages that depend on you knowing if a word is male or female, or familiar or formal in order to get the spelling and pronunciation right.
I don't disagree.. somehow structurally though once you learn it the logic seems to make sense.. kind of like the order of operations with math. But maybe I take it for granted having learned that in my tiny-tantalum years.
 
I pronounce those word differently, don't you? I know spelling "chalk" when you mean "chock" is a common misspelling, but I figured that's what it was, not a result of the same pronunciation.


Yolk instead of yoke for the elevator control is a common error.

Bob
 
Use chawk to mark where the chahks go. Important if you managed to break the brakes before the site was in sight.
 
German is the only language I know where you can write a paragraph in a single word. But, English does have its strange parts.
 
"gage" vs "gauge"

e5a2e243515d8e0ee797f753771996ba--randolph-mantooth-adam-.jpg
Gage


Steam-Boiler-Controls-103_DJFs.jpg
Gauge
 
Lose and loose are easy.

English classes drive me nuts. I had to take 3 semesters in college, because they were turning out illiterate engineers. Those classes drove me nuts, each professor had different rules for things like grammar and punctuation. No consistency.

My five years in sixth grade were the longest of my life.
 
I think GM has a lot to do with dumbing down the "gauge" spelling. Some instrument panel buttons were labeled as GAGES.

Not the first time GM has dumbed down something!!
 
If you mess with the English language you will surely go to gaol.
'Gage' is perfectly acceptable, per the dictionary, but I don't allow it in any of the jet engine cert docs that cross my desk. I remove the 'u' from colour and add it back in to gage to make it right.
Colour is Canadian and British English. We have a bunch of other words like that: neighbour for neighbor, catalogue for catalog, and so on. The Brits have a lot of French influence in their language, and the British Commonwealth inherited it. You 'Muricans dumped them a long time ago and your English evolved a little differently.

When I'm posting on POA I type color instead of colour, since a bunch of you would think I couldn't spell.

Seeing lose and loose confused bugs me, too, as does affect and effect and some others. Allude and elude get confused, but not so much on this forum. Another one is the mixed-up punctuation that some keep doing. An apostrophe is primarily for the possessive, such as Dan's or Mike's post. Or the car's tire is flat. The exception to that is its, the possessive of it. We don't say of the car that it's tire is flat. Its tire is flat is correct. It's is the conjugation of it is, as in it's a hot day.

The plural of something is usually expressed by adding an s. "The storm wrecked many airplanes on the ramp" is what we'd write, not "the storm wrecked many airplane's."

There's Latin in our language, too. We don't write medias when talking about multiple sources of news. Media is already plural. Medium is the singular. Formulae, not formulas. And so on.
 
Last edited:
If you really want to see the fun foreigners have in learning English, read this. And this is just the verbs, too.

English is stupid: a poem about the ridiculousness of grammar
(Verbs edition)

Simon Willmore

Aug 12, 2016 · 3 min read
I’m insanely proud of my home land
But I will never, ever, understand
The stupid rules of English grammar,
They make less sense than MC Hammer.
I’ll try to help; these hints may save you
So be thankful for this gift I gave you.

For example, the past of breach is breached
But we say taught instead of ‘teached’
And taught rhymes with caught but also with bought
Which comes from buy, like bring becomes brought
(And seek goes to sought and fight becomes fought
But think goes to thought, not thunk like it like it ought).
Buy is to buying like bring is to bringing,
We say sang not brang, though we still have singing.

Please, reader, stay strong; you will not be beaten
If I make a mistake, you are right to feel ‘cheaten’.

You write a letter, which becomes written
And if you bite a sandwich it becomes bitten
But whereas the letter becomes a thing that you wrote
The sandwich becomes something you bit not ‘bote’.
If the stars were glowing, you can say they glowed
But we went to a shop (note: ‘went’ not ‘goed’).

Now what about more rules? Let me pre-empt:
Your food can be steamed but your dreams must be dreamt
(For a minute, let’s take this logic to the extreme:
You can dream a dream but you can’t steam some steam).
I ate some bacon, I have eaten the bacon,
Liam Neeson’s daughter wasn’t ‘Took’, she was ‘Taken’.

Another popular word that is deceiving
Is that the word left is the right past tense of leaving
If something appeals then you find it appealing
In the past, it appealed, but you can’t have ‘feeled’ a feeling.
Leading goes to led, which rhymes with lead
But reading becomes read — which is pronounced like ‘red’.
If you have something worth keeping, it is to be kept
But peep, like most others, goes to peeped — Mary wept!

To mess things up further, I’m afraid I regret
To inform you some words don’t change in the past, like set,
As well as cast and burst, cost, put and rid
And bet and put, hit, let and bid.
There’s several more, maybe fifteen I’d bet you;
But let’s move on, before I upset you.

Even worse, now the hard stuff has truly begun
Some past participles are the same as the present — like run;
And some participles are not the same as the past
Let’s rush through some of them now, nice and fast:
There’s spring-sprang-sprung, and ring-rang-rung
But sting-stung-stung and hang-hung-hung.
(But of course, for the death sentence the correct word is hanged
Which doesn’t rhyme with ranged but does rhyme with banged.)

Sometimes you can choose, which is kind of rotten
Depending on context, you can have forgot or forgotten.
Through wear and tear, things become worn and torn
But — sometimes — bear gains an ‘e’ and becomes borne.
In the morning, you can be awaked or awoken
But the morning itself hasn’t breaked, it’s just broken.
Much like throw becomes threw and / or thrown,
And also blow becomes blew and / or blown,
Show becomes shown but sew goes to sewn,
But somehow fly also goes to flew and / or flown.

Now you’ve learned all these words, and your mind has arranged them
The *&!@?## in charge have recently changed them!
We used to say ‘chid’ but changed it to ‘chided’
But, we’ve yet to develop ‘hid’ into hided’.
The past tense of spell is changing — what a pain;
‘Spelled’ is overtaking ‘spelt’ (which is a grain).

My work here is ‘doed’ — rather, I should say done;
I hope that you learned something; I hope you ‘haved’ fun.


From https://medium.com/@siwillmore/engl...out-the-ridiculousness-of-grammar-5337ef467a1
 

When I was a paramedic (about a decade after the show Emergency!), we had a technique we called "Pulling a Johnny Gage." It was considered bad form to launch the caps of the preload syringes across the room with your thumbs while you were putting them together.

I was always a fan of Bobby Troup (getting my kicks on Route 66). He actually played the piano and sang in the pilot.
 
I feel bad for people who have to learn our langauge. Most languages (French aside) are fairly direct in their spellings, IE, a word sounds like the way it is spelled with its letters (Hungarian, German, Russian, Spanish) ..

I'll have to take your word for it with regards to Russian, that Cyrillic alphabet thing is incomprehensible for me. :D
 
Cyrillics and Greek letters aren't that hard, When I spent a few weeks in Russia and the Ukraine, it was pretty easy to sound out the words (street names and the like).
Much harder in Japan and China. I'd learn to write down what my subway stop name looked like when I boarded (the map in the station had Romanji) so I knew what to look for when I got off.
 
Back
Top