Smeg
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The term Smeg can mean any of three things:
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Smeg (appliances)
Smeg is Italy's largest manufacture of domestic kitchen appliances.
Smeg was founded by Vittorio Bertazzoni in 1948 as Smalterie Metallurgiche Emiliane Guastalla (metal enamelling factory in the village of Guastalla, Reggio Emilia). The company is still in the hands of the Bertazzoni family, currently under the direct control of Roberto Bertazzoni. Its headquarters remain a short distance from Guastalla.
External link
- Smeg UK website (http://www.smeguk.com/)
Smeg (vulgarism)
The mild vulgarism smeg is a shortened version of the word "smegma", a particularly unpleasant bodily secretion. It gained greatly increased prominence through its use as a supposedly inoffensive expletive in the British sci-fi/sit-com Red Dwarf, together with a string of derived words including "smegging", "smeghead", etc.
Some fans' theories notwithstanding, the creators of the Red Dwarf series deny that "smegma" is the etymology of the term and claim that it is an invented word. However, lexicographer Tony Thorne, in his 1990 Dictionary of Contemporary Slang (ISBN 074752856X), reports instances of "smeg" (and derivatives) being used as a term of "mild contempt and even affection" among "schoolboys, students and punks" as early as the mid-1970s – a decade or so prior to the inception of the Red Dwarf phenomenon – and claims unequivocally that the etymology of the term traces back to "smegma". Observers who can personally recall using the term "smeg" during the Punk boom of the 1970s see the Red Dwarf creators' claims as the result of either independent parallel development, selective memory, or dissembling.
Smeg (computer viruses)
The Smeg Virus Construction Kit (or SMEG) is a polymorphic engine or library designed to generate viruses. The name is a shortened form of "Simulated Metamorphic Encryption Generator". (F-Secure virus description (http://www.f-secure.com/v-descs/smeg.shtml))