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by usrusr
1918 days ago
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Well, you can find the term "bike pump" even on newyorktimes.com and that's not about hydraulic brake levers, so there might be some difference between technical language and common usage even in English. But I'm posting this to say thank you, I was completely unaware of this detail. In my mind, and likely in GP's mind, the term pump was characterized by the piston principle, not by the medium. And I realize now that the "pumps for air" incorrectness is much less common in English than in German (my home language). Apparently in engineering German the distinction is exactly the same as in English, but it's completely absent from common usage. German never even adopted a verb for high pressure inflation that is not derived from pump. Other than that, the terms pump and Pumpe are extremely similar in English and in German, which is unlikely due to common Germanic roots but because of something much more recent. I suspect nautical terminology which must have been a strong language unifier before navies became a key element of national separation. |
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This means there are not two distinct binary categories of pump or compressor that these things can be neatly classified as. This is compounded a little as fluids are often erroneously thought of as only incompressible fluids like water without realising it's a much bigger category.
Due to my brainfart regarding turbines, I assumed the GP had misunderstood the mechanism of action so I used the simpler word pump to explain. It is not incorrect to describe the action of a turbocharger as pumping more air into the cylinder, especially in my native dialect of English.