AtD translation: patent dinner pail

[Monte Davis]

Sense 3 for sure. As in "patent medicine," itself a phrase ascendant in the
US (& Europe? I don't know) of roughly 1870-1920, when commercial invention
/ mass production / national marketing all picked up speed. So did
imitation of successful new products, and patenting as protection exploded.
"Jing's Patent Cufflinks" became common shorthand for "There are new and
different and better and you can't get the real thing from anyone but Jing
Enterprises."

James Dewar came up with the double-walled vacuum (insulating) vessel in
1892, commercialized by Germans as the "Thermos" flask a decade later. I'd
be surprised if there weren't patent dinner pails -- what we'd now call
lunch boxes -- in the AtD period  with a separate compartment for ice to
keep the food chilled.

On Fri, Dec 29, 2017 at 2:54 AM, Mike Jing <gravitys.rainbow.cn at gmail.com>
wrote:

> I don't see how the 1st meaning makes any sense here. A dinner pail is,
> presumably, just a dinner pail. Unlike a smile, which could be sincere or
> insincere.
>
> Apparently, there are plenty patents on dinner pails. Not sure if the term
> exists though.
>
>
> On Fri, Dec 29, 2017 at 1:43 AM, Jochen Stremmel <jstremmel at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Obviously it's the 1st meaning of the adjective:
>>
>> adjective
>> 1 |ˈpātnt, ˈpat-| easily recognizable; obvious: she was smiling with
>> patent insincerity.
>> 2 Medicine |ˈpātnt, ˈpat-| (of a vessel, duct, or aperture) open and
>> unobstructed; failing to close.
>> • (of a parasitic infection) showing detectable parasites in the tissues
>> or feces.
>> 3 |ˈpatnt| [ attrib. ] made and marketed under a patent; proprietary:
>> patent milk powder.
>>
>> But I'm not sure that there didn't exist dinner pails that were patented.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> 2017-12-29 5:06 GMT+01:00 L E Bryan <lebryan at sonic.net>:
>>
>>> I read that to mean a “real” dinner pail instead of a container that
>>> would do the job, but not an actual or patented dinner pail. Sometimes the
>>> word “patented” is used to indicate “real” or “authentic”.
>>>
>>>
>>> > On Dec 28, 2017, at 7:18 PM, Mike Jing <gravitys.rainbow.cn at gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>> >
>>> > P27.31-35   “Dally, ya little weasel,” Merle greeted her, “the corn
>>> liquor’s all gone, I fear, it’ll have to be back to the old cow juice for
>>> you, real sorry,” as he went rummaging in a patent dinner pail filled with
>>> ice. The child, meanwhile, having caught sight of the Chums in their summer
>>> uniforms, stood gazing, her eyes wide, as if deciding how well behaved she
>>> ought to be.
>>> >
>>> > Is a "patent dinner pail" a dinner pail with patent leather on the
>>> outside? Or more likely, glossy like patent leather?
>>> >
>>> >
>>>
>>> -
>>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>>>
>>
>>
>
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