Word Pronunciation & Dictionary

molly-guard

/ˈmɑli ɡɑɹd/

Word Rarity Rare

Frequency: Zipf frequency 3.81 in modern English

Syllables: mol-ly--guard
IPA: /ˈmɑli ɡɑɹd/

17

Scrabble Score

10

Letters

4

Syllables

9

Unique Chars

Meaning

noun

A physical barrier to protect something from unwanted contact, especially a shield to prevent accidental tripping of an emergency shutdown or power switch.

Example Sentences

"There is a plastic molly-guard covering the escalator's shutdown button to prevent little kids from pushing it and stopping the escalator."
"The radial heat losses are minimized by the Molly Guard foil which establishes a linear temperature profile between the hot heater housing and the water cooled base plate."
"1998 August 10, kensmark, “Vi versus Word. The pros and cons (or why does Vi remiond me of a bigger version of notepad?)”, rec.arts.sf.composition, Usenet, Therefore, we have many "molly guards," which are kludged covers that protect the on/off switch and keep you from hitting it by accident."
"To include switch, cut-out and molly guard, you'll probably need to order at least two, probably three components."

Etymology

From Molly (female given name) + guard. Originally a Plexiglas cover improvised for the Big Red Switch on an IBM 4341 mainframe after a programmer's toddler daughter (named Molly) tripped it twice in one day. Later generalised to covers over stop/reset switches on disk drives and networking equipment.

Regional Pronunciation

American English: /ˈmɑli ɡɑɹd/
British English: /ˈmɒli ɡɑːd/

Inflected Forms

molly-guards (plural)

Questions

How do you pronounce molly-guard?: The recorded pronunciation is /ˈmɑli ɡɑɹd/.
What does molly-guard mean?: A physical barrier to protect something from unwanted contact, especially a shield to prevent accidental tripping of an emergency shutdown or power switch.
Where does molly-guard come from?: From Molly (female given name) + guard. Originally a Plexiglas cover improvised for the Big Red Switch on an IBM 4341 mainframe after a programmer's toddler daughter (named Molly) tripped it twice in one day. Later generalised to covers over stop/reset switches on disk drives and networking equipment.

How to pronounce molly-guard

Open the pronunciation page — Open the Speakur entry for “molly-guard”.
Read the phonetic spelling — Read the IPA spelling (/ˈmɑli ɡɑɹd/) so you know which sounds to aim for.
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