Anent current pescatorial etymological peregrinations, Herbert Shead's book "Anatomy of the Piano" is pretty good: http://www.uk-piano.org/piano-accessories-shop/index.php?l=product_detail&p=56 Nomenclature in any evolving trade, as in langauge in general, is bound to derive from a variety of sources, and the whys and wherefores of some particular appellation may, to discover their origin, require digging that can, for the wordsmith, unearth treasures. John, I love and hate the idea of the A-graffe and the B-graffe, and I feel certain that someone ought to invent a piano use for the B-graffe. I guess French spelling must have changed. In modern French a stapler is an Agraffeur, which fastens feuilles de papier l'un a l'autre avec l'agraffe. I'm afraid that however illiterate it may be to do so, the piano trade seems to have adopted "agraffe" and dropped "agrafe". A google search for the former shows results all related to the piano trade, while for the latter the results, though much more numerous, are not piano-related. I think we are stuck with Agraffe - it's a tide entirely to voluminous and surging to hold back. A-graffe and B-graffe are a step too far into the vast timeless desert of illiteracy, however, IMHO. Best regards, David B. "Well, in the first place the word is agrafe with one f. Next it does not mean, in that sense, a hook but a hook-and-eye fastening. The reason the word is used is that Erard used it. In England the proper name of the part is "stud" but people just love to mis-spell and mispronounce things, so they call it an agraffe and usually pronounce it Ague-raff in case it is confused with a Bee-graf".
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