>>>You mean those compression rings around the piston?
>>>
>>>Do you think the piston is making him pistoff?
>>
>>Ahhhh, you touched an old sore spot. I never quite got this straight, and asked several people which is better: to be piston or off. They just laughed and I never got an answer. So I'm still undecided on the subject.
>
>It has always been my understanding that if one get piston, they will undoubtly get pistoff.

Tangentially... all of the pseudo-Greek names in Bored of the Rings, and in most of the F & SF literature, and in most of the pseudo-scientific names of things, ending with -on... now if they were translations from Russian, they'd be ending with -off? Sauroff? Intel Xeoff and Celeroff? ATI Radeoff? AMD Duroff and Athloff?

I actually never understood why do the Slavic last names get that -off instead of -ov in transcription. True, the Russian pronunciation has it somewhere between "ov" and "of", pretty much like the English "of" being pronounced as "ov" (as in "heckuva job"). And that's only Russian - last names ending in -ov are commonplace in all Slavic languages, where they don't have any hint of an ef. But a double eff? Someone was utterly deaff.

And, BTW, from what Russian I know, "chert" means "devil" (pronounced "chort", though). So this guy Devilon...