A.W. Faber replacement pencils No. 9061, ca. 1910.
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Nice find – interesting headline. To my generation “Ersatz” is associated with WW2 and poor products. This is obviously not the case here… 🙂
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It’s interesting to see Ersatz (noun) used to name the genuine article, as in English the adjective so often (or almost inevitably?) suggests a cheap imitation or fake. OED: “A substitute or imitation (usually, an inferior article instead of the real thing).”
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Gorgeous! Gorgeous! Gorgeous!
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I thought that my original title, which was “Some Genuine Ersatz”, would have been a little too obscure. But from reading the comments, now it’s just a lost opportunity. 🙂
Here is some information about Ersatz from Wikipedia. Quoting from the article:
P.S. I wonder why “Ersatz-Bleistifte” on the box wasn’t compounded; is there a German usage rule for this instance that someone could share?
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Thanks Sean. Then an “Ertsatzbleistift” would be a lesser pencil, or something which replaces a pencil in general – and the above shown “Ersatz – Bleistifte” would be replacements ? LOL 🙂 Anyway, those are such a nice find – congratulations again.
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Since the interior of the big box says “Made in Germany” in English, perhaps the words in the title were capitalized in the English manner to avoid having the adjective change the meaning of the noun. It is a real pencil, unlike the Staples number with a big crack in the “wood” that is sitting next to me as I comment.
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Oh, sooo beautiful!
The Faber-Castell “Ersatzbleistifte” pencil refills are now compound: http://service.de.faber-castell-shop.com/epages/es117781.sf/de_DE/?ObjectPath=/Shops/es117781_ServiceParts/Products/118341
Maybe they used “Durchkopplung” instead of Compounding to emphasise the “Bleistifte” noun …or they just thought it looks better – I think it looks better with the hyphen.
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Thanks Memm, and everyone, for your comments.
RE: the compounding — yes, perhaps it’s nothing more than a grammatical sign of the times that eventually fell out of use.
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