what shall they be nick named?

Drifters of course.

Stupiders or ugliers?

What in the ell is this?

It's a shread.

doofters?

I have a pretty good name in mind, but I don't want to risk getting a naughty point.

Ain't it brifters?

Whut is that thang? If it brakes and shifts, it a brifter, nicht wahr?

Do we have to incorporate every single function in the name? I call them shifters.

But all shifters don't brake.

Irrelevant.

Riiight...then why not call them brakes instead of shifters?

Because the manufacturers call them shifters or shift levers in their literature. Unless they are brake levers, then they call them brake levers.

The point is that function is relevant, and it doesn't make sense to fail to discriminate between function in this case, when we don't call discreet shifters brake levers, and there are not only discreet brake and shift levers, but different types of shifters as well. If I say my shifters don't work, you don't know what I'm talking about-- barcons? down tube? twist?-- but if I say brifters, there is no question beyond which brand.

And model. And front/rear. Kind of a nit-picky reason to use a word that isn't in the language.

There's a radio show that I listen to with the tag line:

"As Albert Einstein once said, 'the important thing is not to stop questioning'".

Some yapping dog part of my head is set off- I don't care who said it! You've identified one thing that is not important, and said nothing about what is important!

There may be a cure for my condition, but so far I just try to manage the symptoms.

Really? Distinguishing between different devices is nit-picky? And as for being in the language, I think you don't understand how language works.

Go on....

how about poofters?

one minute they work fine and then "poof" they are squeal levers!

Squealers

Happily...

In addition to new words entering the lexicon via processes such as borrowing, clipping, back-formation, functional shifts, imitation of sounds, etc., you may be interested to know about such word entry modes as blending and creative coinage.

A blend is a word made by combining other words or parts of words in such a way that they overlap (as motel from motor plus hotel) or one is infixed into the other (as chortle from snort plus chuckle — the -ort- of the first being surrounded by the ch-...-le of the second). The term blend is also sometimes used to describe words like brunch, from breakfast plus lunch, in which pieces of the word are joined but there is no actual overlap. The essential feature of a blend in either case is that there be no point at which you can break the word with everything to the left of the breaking being a morpheme (a separately meaningful, conventionally combinable element) and everything to the right being a morpheme, and with the meaning of the blend-word being a function of the meaning of these morphemes. Thus, birdcage and psychohistory are not blends, but are instead compounds.

Once in a while, a word is created spontaneously out of the creative play of sheer imagination. Words such as boondoggle and googol are examples of such creative coinages, but most such inventive brand-new words do not gain sufficiently widespread use to gain dictionary entry unless their coiner is well known enough so his or her writings are read, quoted, and imitated. British author Lewis Carroll was renowned for coinages such as jabberwocky, galumph, and runcible, but most such new words are destined to pass in and out of existence with very little notice from most users of English.

So, you see, language is dynamic and forever changing, which is why you don't sound like a member of the educated class in Tudor England.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/help/faq/etymology.htm

Interesting how you drew such strong conclusions about my education and language competency from my comment. Interesting how you thought I needed a forum dissertation on word coinage. Interesting. Interesting.

I was coming from the perspective that this is a global forum with many users whose primary language is not English. Our idioms and coined words tend to sow disclarity rather than clarity in such a place.

But thanks for your patronizage.

You explicitly asked him to "go on" so there's no surprise that he did. And you said that "brifter" "isn't in the language," indicating either that you are unaware of how a language's word stock changes over time, or you're knowingly being difficult.