Piggyback
From Free net encyclopedia
ORIGIN OF THE PHRASE
Children usually love being given piggyback rides. When you give a child a piggyback ride what you normally do is to put him on your shoulders or on your back and walk around with him. The expression "piggyback" comes from "pick a pack". In the old days — and I guess even now — it was common practice for individuals who had to carry a heavy object to invariably place it on their back. This method of carrying things around was called "pick a pack". And `pick a pack' when said quickly became `pickapack'. Parents often carried their children "pickapack" too. But children because they loved animals so much changed "pickapack" to "piggyback".
Piggyback may refer to:
- Piggy-back: the activity of riding on someone's shoulders or back, the way a child might try to ride a pig on a farm for fun.
- in marketing, as a description for using the know-how, brand, capital or other asset of some other company to enter in a market. The piggyback strategy is used to reduce risk, and more established companies can leverage the brand and market reach of a partner to help them very quickly pick up the credibility and awareness needed in new market segments.<ref>Piggyback Marketing</ref>
- in telecommunications, piggyback may be a causal or slang term for multiplexing, particularly when a minor signal is carried on a major one (by subcarriers, for example). It can also refer to two or more people sharing the same login or network connection for pay-per-account internet services. Clandestine use of a neighbor's Wi-Fi network is an increasingly prevalent example of this.<ref>Wi-Fi users piggyback on free signals</ref><ref>Hey Neighbor, Stop Piggybacking on My Wireless (requires registration)</ref>
- in electrical engineering, a piggyback circuit breaker is a double-switch that fits in a single slot in a breaker panel. This is only if they are side-by-side in the same unit — it does not count single half-height units which share a slot. Both are used when a panel has run out of slots, but can still accept the current. The piggyback breaker has two separate outputs, one for each circuit.
- in rail transport, piggyback refers to the practice of carrying trailers, semi-trailers or containers in a train atop a flatcar (intermodal freight transport).
- in optometry / ophthalmology piggybacking refers to the practice of using a smaller, rigid contact lens on top of a larger, soft contact lens for clinical reasons.
- A Canadian Reader's Digest article mentioned one contract piggybacking on another. In this context, it meant the person for whom the contract was negotiated received the exact same benefits (and drawbacks) as the person to whose contract it was tied.
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References
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Synonym
- pickaback