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A lanyard (sword knot) fixed to hilt of an infantry sword

A lanyard may refer to a rope or cord worn around the neck or wrist to carry an object. Usually it is used where there is a risk of losing the object or to ensure that it is visible at all times. Alternatively it is a length of cord or wire with a hook at the end used to fire an artillery piece, or to arm the fuze mechanism on an air-dropped bomb by pulling out a cotter pin (thereby starting the arming delay) when it leaves the aircraft. Aboard a ship, it may refer to a piece of rigging used to secure or lower things (see also halyard, lines used for lifting).

Origins[link]

Whistle with lanyard

The earliest references to lanyards dates from 15th century France, during which the word "Lanière" was used to describe a thong or strap apparatus.^[1] Later, in the French military, lanyards were used to connect a pistol, sword or whistle (for signalling) to a uniform on a semi-permanent basis. Lanyards were used in situations where there was a good chance of losing the object—commonly by cavalry and naval officers at sea. A well-made pistol lanyard can be easily removed and reattached by the user, but otherwise will stay connected to the pistol whether it is drawn or in a holster. Lanyards later became a more decorative item. A popular reference to holster lanyards is found in the 1966 Spaghetti Western The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, in which one of the film's main characters, Tuco Ramirez, is known to carrying his pistol on a rope cord lanyard. Eli Wallach, the actor who played the part of Tuco, reportedly told director Sergio Leone that it was too difficult to put a pistol into a holster without looking, so Leone put Wallach's pistol on a lanyard.^[2]

Lanyards of various colour combinations and braid patterns are also commonly worn on the shoulders of military uniforms to denote the wearer's qualification or regimental affiliation. Many regiments were originally mounted and wore the lanyard on the left, enabling the rider to pull a whistle from his left tunic pocket and maintain communication with his troop.

Styles and Materials[link]

Lanyard for keys

The style, design or material used will vary widely depending on end-purpose of the lanyard. Common lanyard materials include polyester, nylon, satin, silk, polyethylene terephthalate (PET), braided leather or braided paracord.

Accessory for Electronics[link]

A USB flash drive with an Ubuntu-branded lanyard. Another feature is the black plastic part. This is a predetermined and reattachable breaking point. It is meant to prevent accidental strangulation when the lanyard is worn around the neck.

Lanyards are widely used with small electronic devices such as cameras, MP3 players and USB flash drives to prevent loss or dropping. Electronics designed to take a lanyard usually have a small through-hole built into a corner or edge of the case or anchored to the frame of the device; the corresponding lanyard generally has a loop of thread on the end that is attached to that hole with a simple knot, usually a cow hitch. Some earphones incorporate the audio signal into the lanyard, meaning it doubles up as headphone cords as well. The Wii Remote wrist strap is a form of lanyard, keeping the device attached to a player's arm during the often vigorous movements involved in its use.

Badge or Identification Holder[link]

Lanyards are commonly used to display badges, tickets or ID cards for identification where security is required, for example, public places such as hospitals, prisons and some schools or in commercial enterprises as well as public gatherings such as concerts, conventions and trade fairs. Such lanyards would often be made of braided fabric with a clip attached to the end are used frequently in retail and business situations for holding name badges. The typical arrangement is to attach a plastic pouch with at least one clear side to the lanyard, with the person's name badge facing the front and occasionally small items such as business cards, pens or tools stashed behind the badge for easy access. Such lanyards can also be used as keychains, particularly in situations where keys can easily be lost for lack of storage, such as gyms, public pools and communal showers.

In these cases, lanyards may be customized with the related name and/or logo of the event, business, or organization. Lanyards can feature a variety of customization techniques including screen-printing, Jacquard loom weaving, heat transfer, and offset printing.

Safety Strap[link]

Lanyards are also often attached to dead man's switches or "kill switches" on dangerous machinery, such as large industrial cutting/slicing machines; on vehicles, such as jet-skis or trains; and on exercise treadmills, so that if the operator suddenly becomes incapacitated, their fall will pull on the lanyard attached to their wrist, which will then pull the switch to immediately stop the machine or vehicle.

Some law enforcement officers and members of the military utilize specialized lanyards to keep sidearms from falling to the ground during missions.^[3]

Lineman Lanyards[link]

Lineman lanyards are used by Lineman utility and other workers to prevent falls, although similar straps are also used recreationally by mountain climbers. This type of lanyard will have a section of heavy duty nylon strapping attached to a metal ring or carabiner which tightens around an attachment point. The strap may be a fixed length or adjustable, and will attach to the wearer to support them against a fixed object or pole.^[4]

As Ornamental Uniform Accessories[link]

Certain lanyards are still worn on uniforms as decorations. Among these are the Orange Lanyard in the Military William Order of the Netherlands, and the German Armed Forces Badge of Marksmanship.

Scoubidou[link]

"Lanyard" can also refer to Scoubidou (also called Gimp, Scoubi, Scoobie, or Boondoggle). It is a plaiting and knotting craft, originally aimed at children, which originated in France, where it became a fad in the late 1950s. Scoubidou-making is a popular pastime at summer camps for children, often employed to keep the children busy. This knotting or braiding technique is also used with leather or paracord to create a decorative lanyard strapping for knife handles or other gear.

See also[link]

• Rope splicing
• Halyard
• Access badge

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Lanyards

Look up lanyard in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• "The Lanyard"—Poem by Billy Collins

Billy Collins
Collins at the Calabash Literary Festival in St. Elizabeth's, Jamaica, May 2010.
Born	(1941-03-22) 22 March 1941 (age 71) New York City, New York, United States
Occupation	Professor, Poet, Author, Anthologist
Nationality	American

Billy Collins (born William James Collins March 22, 1941) is an American poet, appointed as Poet Laureate of the United States from 2001 to 2003.^[1] He is a Distinguished Professor at Lehman College of the City University of New York and is the Senior Distinguished Fellow of the Winter Park Institute, Florida. Collins was recognized as a Literary Lion of the New York Public Library (1992) and selected as the New York State Poet for 2004-2006.

Biography[link]

Early years[link]

Collins was born in New York City to William and Katherine Collins. Katherine Collins was a nurse who stopped working to raise the couple's only child. Mrs. Collins had the ability to recite verses on almost any subject, which she often did, and cultivated in her young son the love of words, both written and spoken. Billy Collins attended Archbishop Stepinac High School in White Plains and received a B.A. (English) from the College of the Holy Cross in 1963; he received his M.A. and Ph.D in English from the University of California, Riverside. His professors at Riverside included Victorian scholar and poet Robert Peters.^[2][3] In 1975 Collins founded The Mid Atlantic Review with his good friend and co-editor, Michael Shannon.^[4]

Career[link]

Collins in La Jolla, San Diego, 2008

Collins is a Distinguished Professor of English at Lehman College in the Bronx, where he joined the faculty in 1968 and has taught for over thirty years. Additionally, he is a founding Advisory Board member of the CUNY Institute for Irish-American Studies at Lehman College. He also has taught and served as a visiting writer at Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York as well as teaching workshops across the U.S. and in Ireland. Collins is a member of the faculty of SUNY Stonybrook Southampton College, where he teaches poetry workshops. Collins was named U.S. Poet Laureate in 2001 and held the title until 2003. Collins served as Poet Laureate for the State of New York from 2004 until 2006. Collins has been named Senior Distinguished Fellow at the Winter Park Institute in Winter Park, Florida, an affiliate of Rollins College. He is on the editorial board at The Alaska Quarterly Review, not actively involved since 2000.^[5][6] He is on the advisory board at the Southern Review, and is similarly named in other journals.

As U.S. Poet Laureate, Collins read his poem The Names at a special joint session of the United States Congress on September 6, 2002, held to remember the victims of the 9/11 attacks.^[7] Though, unlike their British counterparts, U.S. poets laureate are not asked or expected to write occasional poetry, Collins was asked by the Librarian of Congress to write a poem especially for that event. Collins initially refused to read "The Names" in public, though he has read it two times in public since 2002. He vows not to include it in any of his books, refusing to capitalize in any way on the 9/11 attacks. However, "The Names" was included in the The Poets Laureate Anthology, put out by the Library of Congress, for which Collins wrote the foreword. The only published version of "The Names," it contains a number of regrettable typographical errors. As Poet Laureate, Collins instituted the program Poetry 180 for high schools. Collins chose 180 poems for the program and the accompanying book, Poetry 180: A Turning Back to Poetry-- one for each day of the school year. Collins edited a second anthology, 180 More Extraordinary Poems for Every Day to refresh the supply of available poems. The program is online, and poems are available there for no charge.^[8]

In 1997, Collins recorded The Best Cigarette, a collection of 34 of his poems, that would become a bestseller. In 2005, the CD was re-released under a Creative Commons license, allowing free, non-commercial distribution of the recording. He also recorded two of his poems for the audio versions of Garrison Keillor's collection Good Poems (2002). Collins has appeared on Keillor's radio show, A Prairie Home Companion, numerous times, where he gained a portion of his large following. In 2005, Collins recorded Billy Collins Live: A Performance ^[9] in New York City. Collins was introduced by his friend, actor Bill Murray.

Billy Collins has been called "The most popular poet in America" by the New York Times.^[10] When he moved from the University of Pittsburgh Press to Random House, the advance he received shocked the poetry world — a six-figure sum for a three-book deal, virtually unheard of in poetry.^[11] The deal secured for Collins through his literary agent, Chris Calhoun of Sterling Lord Literistic, with the editor Daniel Menaker, remained the talk of the poetry world, and indeed the literary world, for quite some time.^[12]

Over the years, the U.S. magazine Poetry has awarded Collins several prizes in recognition of poems they publish. During the 1990s, Collins won five such prizes. The magazine also selected him as "Poet of the Year" in 1994. In 2005 Collins was the first annual recipient of its Mark Twain Prize for Humor in Poetry. He has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts and in 1993, from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation.

One of his most critically acclaimed works, "Fishing on the Susquehanna in July" ^[13] has been added to the preserved works of the United States Native American literary registry as being deemed a culturally significant poem.

Awards and honors[link]

• 1983, Fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts
• 1986, Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts
• 1991, National Poetry Series publication prize - winner, Questions About Angels
• 1992, New York Public Library 'Literary Lion'
• 1993, Fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation
• 1994, Poetry Magazine - Poet of the Year
• 1995, Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize, Academy of American Poets - shortlist, The Art of Drowning
• 2001, American Irish Historical Society Cultural Award
• 2001–2003, US Poet Laureate
• 2004–2006, New York State Poet Laureate^[14]
• 2005, Mark Twain Award for Humor in Poetry

Poetry collections[link]

• Pokerface (1977)
• Video Poems (1980)
• The Apple That Astonished Paris. University of Arkansas Press. 1988. ISBN 978-1-55728-024-4. http://books.google.com/books?id=LcwWbWcOGQAC&printsec=frontcover&dq=billy+collins#v=onepage&q&f=false. ; University of Arkansas Press, 2006, ISBN 978-1-55728-823-3
• Questions About Angels (1991)
• The Art of Drowning University of Pittsburgh Press, 1995, ISBN 978-0-8229-5567-2
• Picnic, Lightning (1998)
• Taking Off Emily Dickinson’s Clothes (2000)
• Sailing Alone Around the Room: New and Selected Poems. Random House. 2001. http://books.google.com/books?id=_uxrn_B6nQIC&printsec=frontcover&dq=billy+collins#v=onepage&q&f=false. ; reprint Random House, Inc., 2002, ISBN 978-0-375-75519-4
• Nine Horses. Random House, Inc.. 2002. ISBN 978-1-58836-278-0. http://books.google.com/books?id=6MYci63f-yoC&printsec=frontcover&dq=billy+collins#v=onepage&q&f=false. 
• The Trouble with Poetry. 2005. http://books.google.com/books?id=dtMhdlM_q48C&printsec=frontcover&dq=billy+collins#v=onepage&q&f=false. ; reprint Random House, Inc., 2007, ISBN 978-0-375-75521-7
• She Was Just Seventeen (2006)
• Ballistics. 2008. ISBN 978-1-4000-6491-5. http://books.google.com/books?id=lTiSa7Oxvd8C&printsec=frontcover&dq=billy+collins#v=onepage&q&f=false. 
• "Horoscopes for the Dead" (2011) ISBN 978-1-4000-6492-2

Editor[link]

• Billy Collins, ed. (2003). Poetry 180. Random House, Inc.. ISBN 978-0-8129-6887-3. http://books.google.com/books?id=ssxHjRNX9-QC&printsec=frontcover&dq=billy+collins#v=onepage&q&f=false. 
• Billy Collins, ed. (2005). 180 More Extraordinary Poems for Every Day. Random House, Inc.. ISBN 978-0-8129-7296-2. http://books.google.com/books?id=LBD3cfm2_dcC&printsec=frontcover&dq=billy+collins#v=onepage&q&f=false. 
• Billy Collins, ed. (2010). Bright Wings: An Illustrated Anthology of Poems About Birds. Illustrator David Sibley. Columbia University Press. ISBN 978-0-231-15084-2. 

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Billy Collins

• Collins online resources at the Library of Congress
• Billy Collins profile at PoetryFoundation.org
• Billy Collins profile at poets.org
• George Plimpton (Fall 2001). "Billy Collins, The Art of Poetry No. 83". Paris Review. http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/482/the-art-of-poetry-no-83-billy-collins.