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spondonicles
pot holders; billy tongs; tool used to pick up a hot pot, usually on a fuel stove or camp fire: Lance lost the spondonicles, so we had great difficulty removing the pot from the stove. Compare billy grips, spondoolikan. Also, spondonicals, spongs, sponies.
Contributor's comments: [Perth informant] A metal (usually aluminium) hand operated clamp used to lift camping pots on and off a heat source. Otherwise knows as 'billy lifters': "Take that pot of the stove with the spondonicles." - or - "Pass me the spondonicles" (sponies for short).
Contributor's comments: [Sydney informant] Is the shortened form of spondonicles, "spongs", used specifically at my school (specifically in relation to metho fueled camping stoves) or is it a more common regionalism?
Contributor's comments: [Sydney informant] At school (acually on school camps) we tend to pronouce the word with an 'ng' -- spongdonicals, although the shortened, spongs, is more common.
Contributor's comments: Spondonicals is a corruption of the Swedish word for pot lifter. It may have been adopted because of the prevalence of a Swedish brand "Trangia" of camping stove, which has multilingual instructions.
Editor's comments: We contacted the Trangia company in Sweden as this is what they had to say: We have never heard the word "spondonicals". The English word we use is "Handle", in Swedish we use the word "handtag", we have also heard the Swedish word "tamoj", it is a slang word.