My girlfriend and I were walking along a set of railroad tracks a while back, and we came upon a swtich. She had questioned me as to what the origin of the name of the frog was. She asked me if an MOW worker had stepped on the amphibious frog, and that's what frogs were called ever since. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

J.T. Ciampaglia
Phila. Pa.

jtjjtb@aol.com

> My girlfriend and I were walking along a set
> of railroad tracks a while back, and we came
> upon a swtich. She had questioned me as to
> what the origin of the name of the frog was.
> She asked me if an MOW worker had stepped on
> the amphibious frog, and that's what frogs
> were called ever since. Any help would be
> greatly appreciated.

> J.T. Ciampaglia

Next time you pick up a horse's hoof and look at the area which for us would be the sole, notice the pattern of that part. That part of the hoof is called the frog. I don't know why. Then you'll know why the switch part suggested to 19th C railroad workers, all of whom knew horses, that it should be named "frog".
> Phila. Pa.


wrj494@aol.com

I read some horse webpage that said the frog on a horse's hoof is in fact named after it's resemblance to the amphibious creature. So, if this is true, it is indirectly named for the frog.

> Next time you pick up a horse's hoof and
> look at the area which for us would be the
> sole, notice the pattern of that part. That
> part of the hoof is called the frog. I don't
> know why. Then you'll know why the switch
> part suggested to 19th C railroad workers,
> all of whom knew horses, that it should be
> named "frog".



tnold@arsNOSPAMengrs.com

I played the Grim Reaper for halloween last year and the clasps used for capes are called frogs. I think the dictionary had clasp or temporary closure listed as a meaning for frog.


Stuhr Museum
pfdx@aol.com

Some dictionaries show the decorative looping closures around the buttons on old military tunics as being called "frogs." This might be a different etymology from the word railroaders use.

I think I recall that H. L. Mencken's "The American Language" mentions switch frogs as an example of descriptive speech, and supposes that the etymology is becuase the castings look like a frog. Which they do, kind of. But not as much as they look like the horse-hoof picture. Mencken's pages on railroading are from secondary sources and not as good as the rest of that book.

Aarne H. Frobom

> I think I recall that H. L. Mencken's
> "The American Language" mentions
> switch frogs as an example of descriptive
> speech, and supposes that the etymology is
> becuase the castings look like a frog. Which
> they do, kind of. But not as much as they
> look like the horse-hoof picture. Mencken's
> pages on railroading are from secondary
> sources and not as good as the rest of that
> book.

Could that source have been his brother, August Mencken, who wrote the orginal "The Railroad Passenger Car", in 1957?

Of course , I always liked the title of Auggie's other book; "By the Neck, a Book of Hangings"!

Steve Zuiderveen

(from my office in Baltimore City, exactly eight blocks south from where H.L. lived).

SZuidervee@aol.com

The term stems from an allusion to TCU's storied Horned Frog football team's front line. Some block this way and some block that way in a divergent pattern like a switch frog. All to no avail! ;>)

wyld@sbcglobal.net

Up until now I used to speculate that they called them "frogs" because they helped railcars to "jump" from one track to another. It sounded good at the time. Oh well. Live and learn.

wbaoffice@ameritech.net

FWIW, my 1920 Webster's Unabridged says "frog" is related to "fork" which comes from the the French "forchette", meaning "fork". This in turn appears to be derive from an older word which would today be roughly translated as "crotch" (as in "where your legs come together").