Nerf (pronounced nurf)
(1) A device, traditionally metal but of late also rubber
or plastic, attached to the front or corners of boats or road vehicles for the
purpose of absorbing impacts which would otherwise damage the device to which
they’re attached.
(2) A slang term in motorsport which describes the (intentional)
use of part of a vehicle to nudge another vehicle off its course; used also to
describe the almost full-length protective bars used in some forms of
dirt-track (speedway) racing (although the term may have be retrospectively
applied, based on the use on hot-rods).
(3) As a trademark, the brand name of a number of toys,
often modeled on sports equipment but made of foam rubber or other soft
substances.
(4) In video gaming, a slang term for reconfigure an
existing character or weapon, rendering it less powerful.
(5) By extension from the original use at the front and
rear of 1950s hot rod cars and in motorsport, the name adopted (as nerf bar)
for a step to ease entry and exit on pickup trucks or sport utility vehicles
(SUV) and known also as step rails, step tubes, step bars or truck steps; also
sometimes used to describe the extended foot-rests used on some motorcycles.
(6) As "nerf gun", a toy which fires foam darts, arrows, discs, or foam balls; the class is based on the original "Nerf Blaster" by Hasbro.
Nerf bars on a hot-rod.
The suggested etymology is said to account for the application of nerf to gaming where it means “to cripple, weaken, worsen, deteriorate or debuff” (“debuff” a linguistic novelty attributed to gamers) a character, a weapon, a spell etc. The idea is apparently derived from the proprietary “Nerf” guns, large-scale (often realized in 1:1) toys which fire extremely soft (and therefore harmless) projectiles (al la missilis from the Latin); the Nerfball in 1970 apparently the first. It doesn’t however account for the use either in motorsport or on hot-rods but the evidence suggests it was the hot-rod crew who used it first, based on an imperfect echoic, thinking the dirt-track (speedway) drivers using the protective bars running along the outside of the bodywork of their vehicles to nudge other competitors off the track and onto the grass were saying “to nerf” whereas they were actually saying “to turf”. Because the hot-rods became widely known as part of the novel “youth culture” of the 1950s, the specifics of their slang also sometimes entered the wider vocabulary and the bars of the speedway cars, in an example of back-formation, also became “nerf bars”.
A replica AC Shelby American Cobra 427 with naked nerf bars (top) and a real one with over-riders fitted (bottom).
The ultimate hot-rod was the AC Shelby Cobra (1962-1967) of which fewer than a thousand were made, a number exceeded more than fifty-fold by the replica industry which has flourished since the bulge-bodied original was retired in 1967, looming regulations proving just to onerous economically to comply with. The first Shelby Cobra street cars used nerf bars as attachment points for chrome over-riders but, as a weight-saving measure, the latter were usually removed when the vehicles were used in competition, leaving the raw nerf bars exposed. The raw look has become popular with customers of the replica versions and, surprisingly, the authorities in some jurisdictions appear to allow them to be registered in this state for street use.
Bumperettes, top row left to right: 1970 MGB Roadster, 1972 De Tomaso Pantera L, 1974 Ford (England) Capri RS3100 and 1968 Ferrari 275 GTB/4 N.A.R.T. Spider. Bottom row: 1963 Jaguar E-Type Coupé, 1973 Ford (England) Escort RS2000, 1968 Chevrolet Corvette L88 Coupe and 1964 Mercedes-Benz 230 SL.
On production vehicles, what are sometimes mistakenly called nerf bars are actually “bumperettes”, cut-down bumpers which in their more dainty iterations were sometimes little more than a decorative allusion to the weight-saving techniques used on genuine competition cars. In the days before there were regulations about just about everything, bumperettes were often fitted because they were lighter than full-width units, indeed, Ferrari on some cars built for competition had “fake” bumperettes, thin structures which emulated the appearance of those used in road-going models but which attached directly to the bodywork with no supporting structure beneath. Ford was one of a number of manufacturers which fitted bumperettes to high-performance variants; they were as much as a styling feature as a genuine weight-saving measure. The 1970 MGB & MGB GT was unusual in that models exported to North America (NA) featured a unique “split” rear bumper. The change was a Q&D (quick & dirty) way to comply with new US rules requiring the license plate (and its lights) be raised to a certain height above the road but on the MGB, the standard, full-width chrome bumper sat exactly where the plate needed to be. Rather than resign the rear body pressing (an expensive business) British Leyland (then in control of MG) fitted two bumperettes, leaving a gap at the right height for the plate. The RoW (rest of the world) MGBs continued to use the full-width bumper and NA models in 1971 reverted to one when a solution was devised. Things would get worse for the MGB for in 1974, globally it was fitted with heavy, ungainly black-rubber faced bumpers, the only (cheap) way the car could be made to comply with US front & rear impact standards. Because the MGB was by then more than a decade old it was thought it wouldn't remain in production long enough to amortize the investment which would have been required to engineer a more elegant solution but although after 1974 the MGB was heavier, slower and uglier, it remained remarkably popular and the end didn't come until 1980 after more than half-a-million had been built.
The concept of nerf bars as used on hot-rods existed long before the term became popular and can be found in depictions of Greek and Roman ships from antiquity and remain a common sight today, either as a specifically-designed product or simply as old car-tyres secured to the side of the hull and used especially on vessels such as tug-boats which need often to be maneuvered in close proximity to others. The correct admiralty term for these is "fender" (ie in the sense of "fending-off" whatever it is the vessel has hit). Manufactured usually from rubber, foam or plastic, there are also companion products, “marine fenders”, which are larger and permanently attached to docks on quay walls and other berthing structures. Much larger than those attached to vessels, they're best thought of as big cushions (which often they resemble). The construct was fend + er (the suffix added to verbs and used to form an agent noun); fend was from the Middle English fenden (defend, fight, prevent), a shortening of defenden (defend), from the Old French deffendre (which endures in modern French as défendre), from the Latin dēfendō (to ward off), the construct being dē- (of, from) + fendō (hit, thrust), from the primitive Indo-European ghen- (strike, kill).
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