Here's a little cultural language experiment. I wastalking about this to
someone the other day. Go down into your basement, if your house is older
than 15 years, your basement walls are made out of large blocks mortered
together. 

What do you call these blocks? And how old are you?

I've intentionally tried not to use either of the 2 most common names for
them to avoid tainting the experiment.

Please limit reponses to just answering the 2 questions. I want to see
what people think and then I'll discuss why I'm asking this in a about
a week. Thanks.

84 responses total.

cinder blocks. what else? 41.

I have always called them concrete blocks & I 'm over 50.  I have a rental
house which we renovated and when we tore down a block wall, the blocks
felt as light as a feather compared to concrete.  They were made out of 
concrete and sawdust approx 1948 when materials were hard to get ahold of.
These blocks were not deteriorated - looked as good as any I have seen.

Cinder blocks - 36

Cinder blocks.  53.

   Cinder blocks.  38.

        concrete blocks
        45

 Cinder Blocks.  34

This response has been erased.

concrete blocks. 42.

Cinder blocks.  19.

Stones.  I'm 18, and my house is 97 years old.  I call the things used in more
modern houses cinder blocks.

Cinder blocks.  28.

Cinder blocks...34

Cinder blocks, 29.  Although I am sufficiently aware of concrete blocks to
not have any trouble understanding if somebody mentions concrete blocks.

cinder blocks. 40.

So is the rule that people aged 42 or more call them concrete?
I've always wanted to collect together enough of these things so that by
asking people a set of questions you could determine the their age.

I have refered to them both as cinder blocks and concrete blocks at different
times.  43

Glenda, which one would  you more likely use first off, without thinking
about it?

So now we become curious, re., derivation of 'cinder block.'

cinder, n., ME sinder, OE/OHG sintar, OSlav (!) sedra (stalactite)

        partly burned coal, slag from metal furnace, lava

cinder block, n., 

        a hollow rectangular building block made with cement and coal cinders

Interesting, what dictionary did you look up "cinder block" in? It's not
a word, it's 2 words, or a phrase. The 3 dictionarys I looked in didn't list
it.

Cinder block, mostly.

Cinder blocks. It's been 15 years since my 29th birthday.

Cinder block.  29.

Cinder blocks, 25.

What they currently call them in the trade: concrete blocks. I recall the
term cinder blocks, so probably at one time (in another place) I called
them that. But then, the 1936 _Architectural Graphic Standards_ calls them
Concrete Blocks - who am I to argue with AGS? Concrete Tile is another
category. (Concrete Tile is 5"or less high, while Concrete Block is 7-3/4"
high.) Limit my response? Since when?

As far as I know, cinder blocks and concrete blocks are different.  
We had cinder blocks in our house- real porous, rough blocks.  Concrete
blocks are not as porous and are much heavier.  I've seen them in basements,
but not in the house where I grew up.  I'm 26

If you're talking about something with the shape:
_________
_|__|__|_

then I've always called them "cement blocks" (what I grew up hearing).
I see that no one else calls them that...

Cinder blocks, 26

Further research is yielding the information that concrete blocks and
cinder blocks are different products, each with advantages and
disadvantages for different purposes. Cast blocks are made from cement and
aggregate. The aggregate can be chosen from a wide range of materials.
Gravel and sand (in proper proportions) are used in "ordinary" concrete
blocks, but aggregates like cinders, blast furnace slags, clay aggregates,
perlite, and other substances - called artificial aggregates - have some
advantages. Cinder blocks, in particular, are lighter, have a higher
insulation value, and accept nails more readily, than concrete blocks, but
are weaker. Therefore load-bearing walls would use concrete blocks, but
for interior and exterior non-loaded walls, cinder blocks would be better.
All choices are also affected by economics: the cheaper product might be
chosen in preference to the more desirable product. 

re 20: Webster's New Collegiate, 1973/1979

This response has been erased.

cement blocks. While I was growing up, my dad basically re-did the 
entire house, adding a second floor and a basement, and many of
the forts that my brother and I would build were with those sorts
of blocks, until dad needed them, of course.

19

cinder blocks: 29

This is interesting. On Grex I get 7 people saying concrete and 18 saying
cinder. I also asked a couple of offline people and got 2 and 3. That
gives a total of 9 for concrete and 21 for cinder. 70% to 30%.

The reason I was asking this question stems from a recent incident. I was
helping a friend do some wiring in his basement. I own one of those nail
guns that use 22caliber blank cartridges to shoot special hardened nails into
concrete. The cartridges come in 4 different power levels. When I looked up
in the chart which load to use for this job, the chart had separate listings
for "cinder block" and "concrete block". Now, I had always used the 2 terms
interchangably, but had always wondered why there was 2 different names for
the same thing.(My friend also asked "What's the difference?" at that time
too.) However, this chart tended to suggest that they were NOT, in fact, the
same thing. Since it listed "cinder block" as the lowest power cartridge,
and "concrete block" as the next to highest cartridge, this tended to suggest
that the former was much softer than the latter.

I wondered if maybe, many years ago, there was a kind of block that was
possibly made of compressed cinders, or something like that, and had been
replaced by concrete blocks, but the name had stuck.

So I called my father, who is an engineer and has more than a fair amount of
experience with construction and materials(and who I call all the time with
bizarre questions like this. Drives him nuts.), and asked him if there was
any difference between the two. He replied that a concrete block is made from
traditional concrete, a mix of cement and silica based sand as the agregate,
but old cinder blocks were made of a concrete that was a mix of cement and
ground up cinders as the agregate. The cinders were the by product of burnt
coal from power plants, furnaces, etc. Cinder based concrete is significantly
weaker than sand based concrete. However, he remarked that he hadn't seen
a real "cinder block" sold in over 30 years! I mentioned that people seem
to use the 2 terms interchangably. He replied: "Only if they're idiots!".
I thought this was an unfair judgement becuase I was sure that most people I
knew, who may not be as closely associated with construction work as he is,
still tended to use the old term.

(This tends to be supported by the fact that of the few people who replied
"concrete blocks", a fair number of them also mentioned having some sort
of construction experience or lived with someone who did.)

I still hear people using phrases like: "Yeah, fred's had his old Ford up on
cinder blocks for 6 months now." and stuff like that. I wanted to see just
how common this was, and whether it was just older people who used it or
whether it had been passed along to younger people. Although, alot of new
houses have solid concrete basements. It's possible some of the younger people
here may never have seen *either*!

I think it's possible here that while "concrete block" can mean "any shape
of building block that is made out of concrete" and there are many different
sizes and shapes, the term "cinder block" has come to be a generic term for
that particular size and shape of block that is used to build standard
basement walls, regardless of the material it is made of.

Note, I'm not saying that it's any kind of *official* designation, just that
it seems to have become the defacto name for that *particular* item in most
peoples minds. Kind of like the word "kleenex".

I started thinking about other places where old terms are used for new things.
Where the new thing has completely replaced the old thing, but the old name is
still used. For example:

1.) Footballs refered to as "pig skin".
2.) Classical guitars as having "gut" strings, even though strings are
    made of nylon these days.
3.) "glove compartment" of a car. Who keeps gloves in those things?
4.) Since we're talking about construction materials. How about a 2x4. Do
    you know how *long* it's been since those boards were really 2" by 4" ?
    Although this one probably doesn't count becuase 2x4 has come to mean a
    a particular size range of board and not it's exact size.
5.) Those big heavy machines with 6' wide metal drum wheels for rolling
    flat asphalt after it's been poured, are still commonly called "Steam
    Rollers" even though they havn't been steam powered in almost a century.
6.) In a similar vein, in this day of digital clocks, I've heard that some
    younger people don't know what you're talking about when you say it's
    "a quarter past 6", or "a quarter till 8".

Anybody think of others?

(BTW, maybe this should be linked to the language conference.)

"Dialing a phone", which on most phones nowadays means punching a
sequence of buttons.  Fewer and fewer phones have "dials" anymore.

Well, before we get entirely away from "blocks": the following terminology
shows up in the yellow pages: concrete (blocks=b); cement b; lightweight
b; Lightcrete b. Aggregates other than sand and gravel, which give special
properties to the blocks, generally cost more. Having narrower markets,
such products are more often given product names (trademarks). "Cinder"
blocks seem to have fallen by the wayside in favor of names like
Lightcrete", Aerocrete", "Gritcrete", etc. Blocks made with real *cinder*
aggregate are now rare because *cinder* is not a well standardized
material, and the product blocks would not be as consistent as blocks from
aggregates with more accurately defined properties. In addition, with the
invention of block making machinery by Besser, local materials are more
often used to reduce transportation costs, and "cinders" are becoming rare
locally, with the reduced use of coal in communities. 

agora item 195 has been linked as language item 74.

Yes! Thanks John, "dialing a phone" was exactly the kind of thing I was
looking for.

concrete blocks. 30
although there are real cinderblocks in my parents home.
and if i remember right, the folks who are actually doing the manual labor
to construct objects with 'em just call them 'blocks'.

- Backtalk version 1.3.30 - Copyright 1996-2006, Jan Wolter and Steve Weiss