'spanners' is a perfectly correct and usable word in written English.
You can use it as a noun to describe a type of tool for turning nuts and bolts - it's a synonym for "wrenches". For example: "I rummaged through my toolbox to find the spanners I needed to fix the broken pipe."
The design of the new devices, from masculine chrome pipes like luxury motorbike spanners to delicate diamanté bling-sticks, helps, too.
His strategic goal is to get Russia into the World Trade Organisation, not to keep tossing spanners into western works.
The chances are, however, that the West will find more spanners chucked in the works—and Russia's influence will be all the smaller for it.
HOW many spanners in the West's works does it take to make a foreign policy for Russia?
Mr Bush is leaving most of the details to Congress, and many members wish to throw spanners in the works.
In the humanoid league, which is further divided into three sizes of robot kid, teen and adult each android has its own independent on-board sensors and artificial-intelligence software.Moreover, for those who cannot be bothered to get out the spanners and the soldering iron, there is a virtual league as well.
Russia's response to NATO's decision to take in the first recruits from Eastern Europe, and to western intervention in Kosovo to end Serb ethnic cleansing, was to toss as many spanners in western works as possible, and to seek friends instead among awkward regimes, such as Iraq, which continues to flout UN disarmament resolutions, and Myanmar.
The mechanics should keep their spanners at the ready.
But Russia seems not to have noticed how Europe's rules are changing.While Russia appears content to measure its GDP in fired prime ministers and its worth in the wider world by the number of spanners it can toss in various western works, most of the rest of Europe has been, literally, pulling itself together.
Spanners got in the works of the World Shakespeare Festival last week.
All they need are some basic tools – a set of spanners, three or four screwdrivers – and the relevant Haynes manual, all of which will, says Ruppert, quickly pay for themselves.
