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Commonizations

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CajunCenturion

CajunCenturion

Programmer
Mar 4, 2002
11,381
US
The following common nouns are all commonizations: aspirin, zipper, nylon, and teflon.

How many commonizations can you identify? It would be interesting to identify the corresponding eponym and why the commonization occurred.

Please hide your answers.

Good Luck
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Code: 
[white]
Xerox -> xerox : short form of "a Xerox copy"
Coke -> coke : short for any cola-flavored soft drink (Coca-Cola aka Coke was biggest)
Kleenex -> kleenex : short for "a Kleenex tissue"
Crescent wrench -> crescent wrench : The Crescent company invented the style
[/white]

Tracy Dryden

Meddle not in the affairs of dragons,
For you are crunchy, and good with mustard. [dragon]
 
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Code: 
[white]Allen wrench (or Allen Key)- hexagonal screwdriver. 'Allen wrench' is no longer trademarked, but is still capitalized because it is named after a company) 

bikini - two-piece swimsuit for women. The modern bikini was invented in 1946, and named after Bikini Atoll, the site of nuclear weapon tests in the Marshall Islands, on the reasoning that the burst of excitement it would cause would be like the atomic bomb.

escalator - moving staircase. Escalator was originally a trademark combining the words escalade (an old term for using a ladder to scale a wall) and elevator. The first escalator was installed as an amusement ride at Coney Island, New York in 1897.

jungle gym - play structure (from 'Junglegym'). The jungle gym, also known as monkey bars, is a piece of playground equipment on which children can climb, hang, or sit.

Tollhouse cookie - chocolate-chip cookie. Nestlé lost trademark rights in the 1970s. 

Trampoline - The first trampoline was built by George Nissen and Larry Griswold around 1935. The name comes from the Spanish trampolín meaning a diving board. George Nissen heard the word on a demonstration tour in Mexico in the late 1930s and decided to use an anglicized form as the trademark for the apparatus.

Webster's Dictionary - the publishers with the strongest link to the original are Merriam-Webster, but they have a trademark only on "Merriam-Webster", and other dictionaries are legally published as "Webster's Dictionary".
[/white]

Susan
"Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example." - Mark Twain, Pudd'nhead Wilson (1894)
 
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We did this one here thread1256-887928.

__________________________________________
Try forum1391 for lively discussions
 
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Code: 
[COLOR=white]Q-Tip for cotton swab[/color]

This thread gives me déjà vu... thread1256-887928

[tt]-John[/tt]
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Dang! Dimandja beat me to it.

[tt]-John[/tt]
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[white]
Code: 
Velcro - the generic is "hook and loop" tape.
[/white]

-Dell

A computer only does what you actually told it to do - not what you thought you told it to do.
 
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Code: 
[white]Levis - generic is denim trousers
I suspect that "jeans" is also a commonization[/white]

Tracy Dryden

Meddle not in the affairs of dragons,
For you are crunchy, and good with mustard. [dragon]
 
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tsdragon,

Code: 
[white]
Is Levi's already generic? Never heard it. 
Jeans is denim trousers, Levi's is still the brand. 
Have you ever heard about Calvin Klein levis? 
[/white]
 
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1) And any of our Tek-Tipsters from anywhere in the British Commonwealth will tell you that they do not "vacuum" their carpets...they "Hoover" their carpets.

2) IBM originally patented the term "IBM PC", but now, "PC" refers to any computer from a laptop to a desktop that someone uses personally (versus a server).

3) (to Tracy) In the Southeast U.S., "Coke" actually refers to any soft-drink, as in "What kinda coke you want?", "A Crush, please."

4) (also to Tracy) "Jeans" comes from the French term "jean fustian" meaning "fustian (a type of twilled cotton cloth) from Genoa, Italy". So, actually you are virtually correct: "jeans" literally derives from "Genoans".

5) Many claim that the term "'frige" (as a generic abbreviation of 'refrigerator') derives from the 1926 proprietary name, "Frigidaire", a brand of refrigerators.

6) "Dust-Buster" for any hand-held "Hoover".

7) "Happy Meal" for any fast-food offering for children.

8) "Slurpee" for any "slushy-style" frozen drink.

9) Of course, I cannot verify this "commonization", but if you believe the TV ads here in the U.S...."'Fos-tuhs'...Australyun foe beee-uuh." [wink]

[santa]Mufasa
(aka Dave of Sandy, Utah, USA)
@ 02:55 (05Feb05) UTC (aka "GMT" and "Zulu"),
@ 19:55 (04Feb05) Mountain Time

Click here to Donate to Tsunami Relief. 100% of your contributions here go to the victims...0% to administration.
They were "The First-Responder" to the disaster, with relief deliveries arriving before Red Cross and U.S. aid.
 
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Oops ! I nearly forget the most famous American "commonization" of all: Jello !!!!

[santa]Mufasa
(aka Dave of Sandy, Utah, USA)
@ 02:57 (05Feb05) UTC (aka "GMT" and "Zulu"),
@ 19:57 (04Feb05) Mountain Time

Click here to Donate to Tsunami Relief. 100% of your contributions here go to the victims...0% to administration.
They were "The First-Responder" to the disaster, with relief deliveries arriving before Red Cross and U.S. aid.
 
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I thought so as well, but I couldn't find a reliable confirmation of the spelling "fridge", so I went with the the shortening of both "Frigidaire" and "Refrigerator". I'm open minded, however.

[santa]Mufasa
(aka Dave of Sandy, Utah, USA)
@ 19:23 (05Feb05) UTC (aka "GMT" and "Zulu"),
@ 12:23 (05Feb05) Mountain Time

Click here to Donate to Tsunami Relief. 100% of your contributions here go to the victims...0% to administration.
They were "The First-Responder" to the disaster, with relief deliveries arriving before Red Cross and U.S. aid.
 
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>"'Fos-tuhs'...Australyun foe beee-uuh."

Don't be ridiculous...Fosters is Australian for lager... ;-)
 
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I'll agree so long as you pronounce it "lah-guh".

[santa]Mufasa
(aka Dave of Sandy, Utah, USA)
@ 19:29 (05Feb05) UTC (aka "GMT" and "Zulu"),
@ 12:29 (05Feb05) Mountain Time

Click here to Donate to Tsunami Relief. 100% of your contributions here go to the victims...0% to administration.
They were "The First-Responder" to the disaster, with relief deliveries arriving before Red Cross and U.S. aid.
 
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Stella No, I've never heard of Calvin Klein Levis. But especially in the South and Southwest of the USA the word levis is used to refer to any demin jeans. They'd never use the word to refer to Calvin Klein jeans either, but then they'd never WEAR Calvin Kleins.


Tracy Dryden

Meddle not in the affairs of dragons,
For you are crunchy, and good with mustard. [dragon]
 
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tsdragon,

I live in the South and I've never heard "Levis" used as a general term for jeans the way I hear "Kleenex" for any tissue. I don't think it fits the pattern.

[tt]-John[/tt]
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And (in the UK at least), Sellotape for any clear sticky tape on a roll, and Tippex for any kind of correction fluid.

-------
I am not responsible for any "Sponsored Links" which may appear in my messages.
 
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I think "White Out" is used widely enough in the US to count as a Commonization for any kind of correction fluid.

As was pointed out by sleipnir214 in the other thread pointed to earlier (Thread1256-887928), "Aspirin" is a great example of this.
sleipnir214 said:
The Bayer corporation coined and trademarked Aspirin in 1899 as the name for its acetylsalicylic acid product.

Bayer had the trademark for the word taken from it at the end of World War I. Another company, Sterling, Inc., bought the trademark from the U.S. government in 1918. By that time, many manufacturers were flooding the market, and the U.S. Federal courts ruled in 1921 that the word was a generic mark and thus unprotected. Aspirin is still a trademark in many countries, though.
Click to expand...

Other examples I provided in the other thread that I haven't seen here yet:
Magic Marker - This company actually went out of business several years ago, but I still use the word to describe permanent markers such a Sharpie (The heir apparent that might displace the 'word' Magic Marker)
Palm - As in Palm Pilot. People often refer to PDAs in general as "Palms"


[tt]-John[/tt]
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