Hocuspokus-Handy!

One day last year I was looking at a page from the Vienna newspaper Der Standard, and fixed on this "Hocuspokus-Handy" graphic. It took me a little while to make the Handy = mobile phone connection. I thought it might be an Austrianism—a friend studying in Berlin didn't seem to know about the term. Finally, this week, once more 'twas LanguageHat to the rescue:

Anatol Stefanowitsch in Bremer Sprachblog discusses the question Woher kommt das Handy?: where does the German word Handy 'mobile telephone, cell(ular) phone' come from? After rejecting various theories (such as that it's short for the 1940s term handie-talkie), the floor is thrown open to suggestions, and Detlef Guertler of Wortistik linked to a post there proving to Anatol's satisfaction that it comes from a term for 'hand-held microphone' used in the CB radio community.

A few years further back still, I remember a descent on Singapore Airlines in which were admonished to cease using handphones, which, with the Singaporean accent's elegant unreleased stops, I took for "headphones", which still seemed odd. But then next came the "Now would be a good time to try and flush your heroin down the toilet if you wish to avoid the death penalty" announcement (or words to that effect), so oddness was clearly relative.