At 03:57 PM 10/20/06 -0400, Sheldon Brown wrote:
>Here in the U.S., most of the roads are paved, so there is no longer
>any mud to guard against, at least for road cyclists. ;-)
I believe the term for these appendages may well have originated from automotive useage. Early bikes didn't have them, but they would have been useful for keeping mud off someone driving a car down a muddy road. In North America, where up until the 1960s it was common to push-start other cars using bumpers, I suspect the fenders were often used to fend off stray animals and pedestrians.
But hey, so long as we all understand what the Limeys and Yanks mean, I'm fine with it. In fact, it adds a certain charm to this list when I see folks from the UK use words like "mudguard", "chainset", "sprints", "tubs" "Campag" and so on. Sometimes these terms actually end up being adopted on this side of the Atlantic, like "saddle" instead of "seat".
John Betmanis
Woodstock, Ontario
Canada