Diving Lexicon in Pop Culture

[Akimbo]

It is interesting how terms like "decompress" and "deep dive" have made it into popular non-diving lexicon. Can you think of any others?

I pity anyone trying to learn American English. We have a culture of inventing and cooping words at-will. Just look at what we did to the acronym S.C.U.B.A.

Christian Lambertsen designed a series of pure Oxygen rebreathers starting in 1940 as a medical student. He named them Laru for Lambertsen Amphibious Respiratory Unit which became a standard for the UDT and SEALs for decades.

Lambertson coined the acronym
SCUBA in 1952* to describe all
Self-Contained Underwater
Breathing Apparatus​

* some accounts indicate that Lambertson used the term in the 1940s... either way, he is universally credited.

 

[Lorenzoid]

I'm not sure I buy the idea that "to decompress" in the sense of "to unwind" has its origins in diving. It seems more likely to me to have come from a sense of feeling "under pressure." People speak of feeling under all kinds of different pressures--time, money, obligations, etc. We're "pressed for time." One might naturally speak of relieving the feeling of pressure as "decompressing." However, I suppose it would be equally plausible to speak of relieving the feeling of pressure as "de-pressurizing." Maybe "de-pressurize" sounds too sci-fi to have caught on, so "decompress" won out?

 

[flyboy08]

My wife complains about my " off gassing" at night

 

[Akimbo]

My wife complains about my " off gassing" at night

I think that comes from the chemical industry... out maybe that is out-gassing. I remember that we had to find documentation on almost everything we put into the saturation chambers when I was a sailor to prove it wouldn't outgas stuff into the atmosphere that we weren't testing for. Thankfully NASA had the same problem and the money to do the studies.

I wonder if off-gassing really came from decompression theory or not?

 

[tech_diver]

I had someone once tell me to 'Get Bent!' But I don't think they meant anything about diving.

 

[Scuba-74]

I think I've heard "running out of air" being used in non-scuba conversation. When I hear "taking a deep dive" I picture more of a free dive than scuba dive TBH. Nothing else comes to mind...

 

[Akimbo]

I had someone once tell me to 'Get Bent!' But I don't think they meant anything about diving.

Perhaps it was an invitation to dance?

Even "Bends" for DCS was cooped from a popular dance when the Brooklyn Bridge was under construction, the Grecian bend. Your example appears to be another new meaning of the word. No wonder French language purists get bent out of shape over what we do to the English language.

 

[Akimbo]

I'm not sure I buy the idea that "to decompress" in the sense of "to unwind" has its origins in diving...

I would be very surprised if de-compress and re-compress weren't made into un-hyphenated new words by the early divers and caisson workers... but I wouldn't get too wound up if they came from somewhere else.