I love the way eBay sellers, particularly the Chinese ones, pack adjectives into listing titles. I saw this one a few minutes ago: "Portable men's Soft Hair Beard Brush Badger Hair Shave Razor Bristle Barber Tool" Portable? As opposed to what? The old room-filling console brushes?
Due to the vicious nature of a badger, they must be sedated before they become portable or suitable for shaving use.
No argument there! I think you have to be of a certain age, though, to appreciate the word "portable" and how it use to imply that something weighed less than 20 pounds (10kg?) and had a handle ("for easy carrying").
on the surface it does seem odd - particularly the use of ‘portable’ in this instance - but there is eBay wisdom in using numerous key words in the description to further broaden the prospective audience who often do keyword searches when hunting.
I imagine it is a Mandarin-English google translate issue, whereby the Chinese term signifying "travel" or "travel brush" ends up rendered in English as "portable."
Honestly, I'm sure that that is exactly what happened. As I've said, though, I'm just old enough to enjoy the subtleties associated with a word like "portable" and see the humor of associating it with something small like a shaving brush. I'm sure that the younger ones among us will someday find the same humor in the use of words like "mobile" or "smart".
