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copper = cord ?

afx

Senior Member
slovak
Hi,

In the Stealing the Network - How to Own a Continent book there is a situation, where man is preparing some networking equipment and following sentence is used:

In case the copper is cut, I have backup GPRS service and a terrestrial microwave provider.

Copper is here used as a synonym for cord. I did not find in any dictionary this meaning. Is this common use of word copper?

Thanks a lot for answer.
Hi,

In the Stealing the Network - How to Own a Continent book there is a situation, where man is preparing some networking equipment and following sentence is used:

In case the copper is cut, I have backup GPRS service and a terrestrial microwave provider.

Copper is here used as a synonym for cord👁 Cross :cross:
. I did not find in any dictionary this meaning. Is this common use of word copper?

Thanks a lot for answer.
I disagree on the "cord" assessment. The copper is the wire/cable that carries the network's information. The writer is just using "copper" to refer to the wire/cable.
Sorry, I thought that cord is the same as wire. So my question should be whether copper is commonly used as a synonym for wire?
Yes, "copper" is here a metonym for "electronic cable" because the conducting medium in electronic cables is/was copper. Metonymy is (among other functions perhaps) a literary device: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metonymy

I am not sure we commonly use the word "cord" on its own to refer to electrical or electronic cables in English, but it is used in this sense in combinations such as power cord. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_cord
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Sorry, I thought that cord is the same as wire. So my question should be whether copper is commonly used as a synonym for wire?
"Copper" for "wire" or "cable" isn't a usage I'm familiar with, afx.

But:
~ I might have misunderstood the question
~ I'm not a very "technical" person.
Copper is the metal used in the cable/wires to send the information. If that gets broken (the "copper is cut") the person has a microwave relay that can send the information without the wire/cable/copper. I think the use of copper is to contrast with the medium of the backup - a beam of microwave radiation. However, it is not a common substitution, except perhaps in the contexts such as this, where one might need to contrast/specify optic fibre, copper and microwave beam as the choices of how to send the data.
...one might need to contrast/specify optic fibre, copper and microwave beam as the choices of how to send the data.
Precisely how I saw it. There are many ways to transmit information these days. In particular we have to distinguish between optical fibre and the increasingly old-fashioned copper cables.

_________________________________________
P.S.

Cord is, I believe the AE version of what we call 'flex' in BE. This is used to carry electricity to power household appliances.

Cable usually used to carry either power or information over long distances.
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