condom

A latex balloonlike thing that acts as a contraceptive. Leather condoms from 800 years ago have been found in archaeological digs. There are condoms for both males and females to wear; the most popular is the one for male use.

The first well-documented condom was created by Gabriel Fallopius (yep, as in fallopian tubes. He was an anatomist) in the mid 1500s. They were made of medicated linen, a standard of 8 inches long (I won't comment on that.) and was tied on with a pink ribbon. I have no idea why it was pink. More feminine, perhaps? They were referred to as "overcoats".

From here, legend has it that there was an Earl of Condom (who, needless to say, later went on to request that his name not be associated with his invention) that was asked by King Charles II to create a device that would prevent him from getting syphilis. As there were many, many bastards of this particular King, it was obvious that contraception was not his main goal. Anyway, the device was made of oiled and stretched sheep's intestine.

In the 1870s, they first started being made from vulcanized rubber, and almost immediately aquired that nickname. Latex wouldn't be used until the 1930s.

n. the little plastic or rubber thing that protects your tube's valve stem from rim damage.

(Noder's note: Good GOD, there's some heavy sexual innuendo in that definition.)

From the Dictionary of Mountain Bike Slang

A small town in southwest of France. For a long time the people in Condom devoted themselves with producing Armagnac, a fine liquor, and feeding old and rich Englishmen who came there for their holidays in search for things which do not exist in England, like food and sun.

Then, one day somebody told the natives that the name of their city had a special meaning in English, something they called "capote anglaise" (English hood) in French.

They decided to build a Museum of the Condom to entertain the tourists, not very far from the river Baise which crosses the city (Baise would mean "fuck" in French if it were not for a small difference which cannot be rendered in ASCII). You can visit the museum from June 17 to September 10, every day from 10am to 12am and from 3pm to 7pm. 20 francs for adults, 10 francs for children and students.

Condom also has a few interesting mansions of the 12th to 16th centuries, and I visited its beautiful gothic cathedral last year, but this is not the reason why you read this node, did you?

Acronym: College Of Notre Dame Of Maryland. Just north of Loyola College on Charles Street in Baltimore, the College of Notre Dame of Maryland is a Roman Catholic school for women only. The rumors vary: "Condom Girls" are said to be anything from virginal and prudish to, well... the town bicycle. As with all generalizations, the truth is probably much more moderate, and sadly, less outlandishly ironic.

condition out = C = confuser

condom n.

1. The protective plastic bag that accompanies 3.5-inch microfloppy diskettes. Rarely, also used of (paper) disk envelopes. Unlike the write protect tab, the condom (when left on) not only impedes the practice of SEX but has also been shown to have a high failure rate as drive mechanisms attempt to access the disk -- and can even fatally frustrate insertion. 2. The protective cladding on a light pipe. 3. `keyboard condom': A flexible, transparent plastic cover for a keyboard, designed to provide some protection against dust and programming fluid without impeding typing. 4. `elephant condom': the plastic shipping bags used inside cardboard boxes to protect hardware in transit. 5. n. obs. A dummy directory /usr/tmp/sh, created to foil the Great Worm by exploiting a portability bug in one of its parts. So named in the title of a comp.risks article by Gene Spafford during the Worm crisis, and again in the text of "The Internet Worm Program: An Analysis", Purdue Technical Report CSD-TR-823.

--The Jargon File version 4.3.1, ed. ESR, autonoded by rescdsk.