Dear American friends, there is an 'L' in solder. Please use it!
That one gets me too.
This one!
I looked this one up last night. The evidence isn't entirely clear, but suggests that, as usual, it's a case of the leftpondians sticking with the original pronunciation while the Brits went and Frenched it up, but that doesn't make it any less grating.
Anyway.... I propose a moratorium on previous pronunciations, and that we all adopt the following system:
Solder ('
sole-derr') for an alloy primarily composed of tin and lead, and as a verb for joining metal using a low-melting-point filler.
Sodder ('
sod-er') for all non-lead-based alloys optimistically intended to be used for soldering electrical connections, and as a verb for failing to make such connections in a satisfactory manner.
Hence: "
My cheap shitty pink USB charger from China stopped working because of crappy sodder joints, so I had to re-solder them."
Or: "
Ach, you've soddered it!" "
But I'm using 60:40!" "
Try turning the soldering iron temperature down a bit and use more flux..."
It's easy to remember... "L is for lead" and "sodder's a right sod to work with".
And, why do they pronounce 'mirror' as 'mere'?
I think it's more 'me-orr', which just makes me imagine Eyore's obnoxious younger sibling...
