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Dale Offline OP
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Is there a word which refers to the situation when a Brand Name becomes the label for the class of goods? Examples: Xerox for copies, Scotch Tape for adhesive tape, and Qtip for, well, qtips!

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several terms to choose from: genericized trademark, generic trade mark, or proprietary eponym

-joe (proponym?) friday

edit: in Law, amazingly enough, you have the shortened generic mark.

Last edited by tsuwm; 01/28/08 01:59 PM.
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Label Day?

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Google reminds us that it's the 50th anniversary of the LEGO brick.

-joe (goldbrick!) friday

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Yeh, I was wondering why. I've contributed to their gold brick by buying bricks for two generation. Must admit it looks cheerful.

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Actually, Xeroc stricly enforces the use the Xerox trade name, and doesn't permit copy shops to advertize "xerox copies' unless they have a Xerox machine. (and then they want Xerox® Copies)

same goes for Cotton Swabs.. (Q-Tip is just one brand of cotton swabs.

likewise Scotch® brand adhesive tape (or Scotch® Brand Post It Notes.

Most companies work hard to make sure their brand name doesn't become a generic term.. (all most, but not quite!)

in US Aspirin is generic, but that's not true world wide.

In canada (and most of europe) you can only buy BAYER brand Aspirin.

and likewise in UK you hoover (vacuum) with any brand machine, but in US Hoover is just one (of several) brands of vacuum cleaners.

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Oh, no! No no no! I saw two threads, I thought, with the title above, and that they were exactly alike with the exception of a request at the end of one of them to delete the extra. So I did...but they BOTH disappeared!
My deepest apologies to those who posted; I can remember that Aramis did, with his unpublished-writer post; also morphememedley I think; Branshea; and Faldage(?). Please, if you can remember what you posted, do it again.

I took a risk--and you-all paid the price. I'm so sorry.

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Jackie perhaps you were thinking of this one but if not you should peruse it anyway as it is pertinent and contains a few of my own brilliant posts

http://wordsmith.org/board/ubbthreads.php/ubb/showflat/Number/172925/page/1#Post172925


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I don't think that's it, dahil; but I guess you've sewn up the self-serving post of the day award!

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Oh, trial-and-error, Jackie!
There was a new poster, who asked how 'cingular' came to be transformed to 'shingles', meaning: 1. Eruptions along a nerve path often accompanied by severe neuralgia. ( medical term, right, called herpes zoster)

There was Aramis' post with a story someone wrote about a four-year old asking for Band-Aid. Where he commented on and fulminated against the form
" try and find" a Band-Aid in a rent-a-car.
I gave an answer to that one, far from priceless.( my answer, I mean)

Plus a post where I asked about a maybe different origin for the plural of the word 'shingle' (e.i. not from cingulum). I only knew the word as 'pebbles'.
1. Building material used as siding or roofing.
2. Coarse beach gravel of small water-worn stones and pebbles (or a stretch of shore covered with such gravel).
3. A small signboard outside the office of a lawyer or doctor, e.g. (still interested in an answer)

Then a priceless post of mine that was the key to the solution of all current world problems.
That one I forgot.


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