Antenna vs. Aerial

[youngn]

G'day all,

a *pointless* post, but one im thinking about since firemanjoe brought it up today...

Antennas or Aerials... What do you call em?

Also it was good to finally meet ya Stretch!

Cheerz

[rochedalescan]

Antenna or Antenae was the original wording Aerial is just a lazy word im thinking, I prefer Antenna.

[youngn]

I always used to say Antenna, then adopted Aerial for some reason...

bloody Joe, now im confuzed...

[Stretch]

Funny enough Youngn, as soon as Joe said to call it an antenna, i called it an aerial

Likewise also

[bodyguard]

Antenna = American
Aerial = English

It's anyones choice I guess, I use both.

[workerboy]

Call me weird but I say house antenna and car aerial, Not sure what is technically correct. Have to say it was a good question

[Stretch]

Same thing applies with work.

When I do the change orders I ask for $500 worth of 2 dollar pieces etc. Not coins but pieces. I don't understand why and neither does anyone else.

[Scannersplitterguy]

A lot of people misspell aerial as ARIAL or ARIEL.....
Makes me cringe

[itsbutme]

Hi all,
In the good ol' days we used to use mainly wire aerials. Then came the extendible vertical aerials we saw appear on cars and later on walkie-talkies and short-wave portable radios, and later still on FM broadcast radio receivers. When we went past the broadcast radio stations, we used to see the wire aerials slung between poles or metal towers. Aerials were understood to be electro-magnetic radiators located conspicuously in the air... Hence the name "aerial" was born out of our laziness in our shortening of our sentences in our making redundant the words "wire" or "rod".

Shortly after, when television became available to the masses, yagi antennae became regularly installed on the gutter-facia boards of domestic house surfeits. Because these tuned and directional electromagnetic reception devices had multiple "antlers" like to deer, they became commonly known as antennae. A singular device of this sort became known as an antenna, and due to the large amount of Americanisation affecting our Australian language, the plural form of this word became corrupted to "antennas".

With the Asian manufacture of a large proportion of our radio transceivers receivers and televisions, came their user manuals written in what we commonly refer now-a-days as "Chinglish", and so our Australian language has developed its new colloquialisms over time and with new generations of children.

As an interesting aside, before decimalisation of our coinage in Australia, we used to have the three-penny silver coin (which we called a, "thri-pence"), the six-penny silver coin (which we called a "sixpence" or a "six-penny-bit") and a shilling coin (which we called a "Deenar" or a "Bob"). When we were counting these, we would call the sixpenny coins, sixpenny "bits" or sixpenny "pieces". When we were doing our banking we would always call the number of coins as ten, for instance, two shilling "pieces", which would add up to a "quid", or more correctly referred to as a "pound".

I hope this information from an "oldie" like me is some sort of help to you all.

Bob VK4GCA

[youngn]

Wow, thanks for all that info...

Bet you I would never learn any of that in class at school.

Cheers

[bananaman]

we are not America yet give it a couple of years and we will be

[Stretch]

Cheers Bob. Get the feeling you could be quite informative on this site

we are not America yet give it a couple of years and we will be

Eventually

[the_tango]

What a great insight into the origins of aerials versus antennae! Thanks for that Bob!

[mpep74]

Good post.
I use aerial for whips, and antenna for Yagi, and anything that is built.
No particular reason as both are correct.

A lot of people misspell aerial as ARIAL or ARIEL.....
Makes me cringe

The various spellings also make me cringe. And the plural of antenna is NOT antennas, but antennae. But soooo many people get that wrong too.

[Comint]

The various spellings also make me cringe. And the plural of antenna is NOT antennas, but antennae. But soooo many people get that wrong too.

Nothing like been soooo wrong yourself.

Antennae is the plural of antenna on insects.

Antennas is the plural of antenna in the electromagnetic environment.

--
Comint

[dags19]

i use aerial regardless it been a whip or a gigantic piece of metal sitting 50 feet in the air just my 20 cents worth