Is this a Hoodle?

 
A while ago I bought a cheap extending leg table which was made in China.  The rather entertaining instructions included the line "Propel the inner rod towards the outer tube until the hoodle locates the orifice."  It will always be the 'hoodle table' to us now, but if not a hoodle, what is the correct name for that type of spring catch.

Comments

[iceng]

Pop-Lock, I called it long before it was named for a danse craze
Drives one crazy on long tubes in a hurry :-Þ   A

[AndyGadget]

 
Thanks Iceng.  In all my years, I've never heard of a pop-lock.
^{(The dance craze passed me by too #;¬)} 

[Kiteman]

I've always called it a springy-locking thing.

It is now a hoodle.

[AndyGadget]

 
Hoodle seems fairly common in Chinese product descriptions. There's a self assembling hoodle man, a casual hoodle Chinese cheke, and various hoodle games.

I'm wondering if it isn't a word originally coined in the sense of a "thingamabob" or a "whatjemacallit" when a technical writer asked a colleague to identify something.

[kelseymh]

McMaster-Carr calls them
tube-connector buttons (scroll down the page or search for "telescoping tubing"). You can get zinc-plated ones for less than 75 cents (US) each.

[orksecurity]

I think you've just encountered a good example of Chinglish... a new word coined as a side effect of bad translation from Chinese to English.