blivet

[Archived Topic]

My father says this is an old army term, but I can't find it in the dictionary, and he wont tell me,
Amy, Birmingham, Alabama

Submitted by ( - )

[Archived Reply]

Possibly you couldn't find it because of the spelling.

bliv·it (blĭv'ĭt)
n. Slang.
Something annoying or pointless.
Something difficult or impossible to name.
[Origin unknown.]


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The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

Leif, WA, USA

Reply from ( - )

[Archived Reply]

Amy, Your daddy is right about a military connection, although the ‘ bad’ meaning doesn’t seem to be so bad that it requires censorship – you could turn on a TV set and hear (and see) worse than that. It also has some other meanings besides the one that your father was worried about. And incidentally, had you read the site instructions, and hit the http://onelook.com/index.html link, as suggested, and typed your word in the box, you would have found the basic answer yourself. Below I have added some additional info that you might not have found.
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BLIVET or BLIVIT noun [1940s and still in use] (U.S., originally Australian military) 1. A bag filled with excrement (popularly defined as ‘10 pounds of shit in a 5-pound bag’) and hence nonsense; useless, unnecessary, annoying <1945, ‘Air Words: Blivet bag’: A cloth bag or paper sack in which flyers dispose of human excrement and which they toss overboard. Sometimes used as auxiliary bombs.... The expression arose among young American flyers in New Guinea and is of Australian origin.> 2. a fat unpleasant or offensive person or thing; an unpleasant or distasteful job, task, or situation (cf.‘trivet'). 3. (Military) a) A reprimand or the like b) A plastic or nylon bag for carrying or other liquid, especially a large bladder-like container for airdropping fuel.
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TRIVET/TRIVET noun [1950s] ‘a pound of shit stuffed into the toe of an old sock and used as a blackjack'; ....a mashed potato turd stuffed down a sink (‘Limerick’ by G.Legman, 1952) (cf. ‘blivet’)
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BLIVET noun, as technical jargon 1. An intractable problem. 2. A crucial piece of hardware that can't be
fixed or replaced if it breaks. 3. A tool that has been hacked over by so many incompetent programmers that it has become an unmaintainable tissue of hacks. 4. An out-of-control but unkillable development effort. 5. An embarrassing bug that pops up during a customer demo. 6. In the subjargon of computer security specialists, a denial-of-service attack performed by hogging limited resources that have no access controls (for example, shared spoolspace on a multi-user system).

This term has other meanings in other technical cultures; among experimental physicists and hardware engineers of various kinds it seems to mean any random object of unknown purpose.

It has also been used to describe an amusing trick-the-eye drawing resembling a three-pronged fork that appears to depict a three-dimensional object until one realizes that the parts fit together in an impossible way.
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So Amy, if your are ever in the desert and out of fuel and you see a blivet drop from the sky – proceed with caution, and don’t mention anything to your father!!
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Ken G – January 12, 2003

Reply from Ken Greenwald (Fort Collins, CO - U.S.A.)

[Archived Reply]

Leif, You must have submitted that before me while I was logged in and writing because I didn’t see your response when I last checked. My posting sources (which I forgot to include) were a meld of Cassell’s and the Random House Dictionary of American Slang. And Random House did also say that the origin of the word was ‘unknown’ although Cassell’s and they, both certainly delivered a lot of colorful doo on the subject!

Ken G –January 12, 2003

Reply from Ken Greenwald (Fort Collins, CO - U.S.A.)

[Archived Reply]

Whoops! And the technical jargon stuff was from Dictionary.com.

Ken G –January 12. 2002

Reply from Ken Greenwald (Fort Collins, CO - U.S.A.)

[Archived Reply]

Would you please email to me a full text of "The Limerick" edited by G Legman and published by Panther publishers on my address : royalsandy99@rediffmail.com.

Thanks

Royal Sandy

Reply from ( - )

[Friends o the Gerund]

Friends of the Gerund is happy to help you with this word. All of the modern definitions are wrong and are wrong uses of the word. A blivet is a spare fuel bladder for a boat or an airplane. Used metaphorically, it refers to a person whose shape resembles a fuel bladder.

Other (mis)uses of the word appear to have arisen from misunderstandin, carelessness, &to..

http://friendsofthegerund.blogspot.com

[Bobinwales]

Welcome Friends of the Gerund. But please tell us why you are shouting.

[tony h]

A hunch.

Blivet seems to me like the name of person. So I did a search and found the play which features Blivet being the 1909 work; Le danseur inconnu : comédie en trois actes par Tristan Bernard. I am trying to find an English translation as my French is not good enough to determine whether Blivet is a figure of fun that would have given his name to such an object.

https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k ... texteImage