But before you Spackle, you’ll have to Sheetrock® the walls…
:smack: You havd better start using a different term. A Wetbike is a particular type of personal watercraft.
WiteOut & SnoPake (the correction fluids)
Roomba (the robotic “Hoover”)
Off Topic:
2 minutes later…
Simulpost and simulthought?
On topic:
I am curious about the “to google” verb thing. Maybe this question warrents an IMHO thread: Does the Verb to google mean “to search the web” or “to search the web using google”… I think it means the latter, and I have never heard anyone use the verb in the other form.
How about “to tase,” derived from TASER, as used in a memorable incident at the University of Florida? (“Don’t tase me, bro, don’t tase me!”)
That’s usually because their trademark lawyer sees the ads and puts the kibosh on it. Bad idea from a protect-one’s-trademark perspective to encourage people to use it generically.
Jello
Legos
Tivo
Kleenex
Coke
QTips
… are often as verbs.
They… are? I don’t think I’ve ever heard “Coke” as a verb; at least, not in reference to Coca-Cola.
Tivo is the only one I’ve heard of as a verb. How do you QTip something? (And it is “Lego”, not “Legos”)
Well, “Beer me,” is a common phrase, I suppose you could get away with “Coke me.”
But I just don’t know how I would “Jell-O something,” or what I would do if someone was “Jell-Oing me.”
It means to search the web. It happens that Google is the most commonly used search engine, so that’s what most people imagine you’re going to be looking at, but what difference is there between “search the web for X” and “google X” to the person giving the directions? Is there a reason one would direct another to use a specific search engine? Are you expecting different results? Would you ever tell someone to “AltaVista” or “Yahoo” something? Google has come into play as a verb because it sounds catchy and because at one time it had a single and specific function, just like Xerox.
A couple more, although I’m not sure about the first. I think when the fabric treatment was more widely used, Scotchgard was used as a verb. And there’s “Would you like to supersize your fries?” (Supersize does not appear to be a trademark, but Super Size is and is owned by McDonald’s.)
In the UK to tannoy means to make an announcement over a public-address system. That particular company’s loud-speakers and amplifiers were widely used in such places as railway stations, factories and army camps.
Actually, at one point they did advertising with the tagline “Do You Yahoo!?”
For those of us old enough to recall its distinctive odor in school hallways, mimeograph.
Are any of the original trademark products themselves defunct while the verb goes on?
EDIT: Does anyone else DHL a package? Or Fed Ex it? We never “Royal Mail” something when we post it.
I’m not sure if snowboard was a trademarked name when it first came out. It’s predecessor, the Snurfer, was.
You would generally UPS a package, even if you were sending it via Fedex ground. You would Fedex it if you wanted it there overnight, even if you were using the USPS’s Express Mail.
Though to be fair, these generic terms aren’t always used, because it is often important to specify which exact service is being used.
Around these parts, people use “google” to mean “look it up.” It doesn’t even necessarily mean on the computer. When a guy on House was having trouble in the stall of the men’s room, House told him to quit the junk food and get more fiber. When the guy asked “What’s fiber?” House replied “GOOGLE IT.”
Actually, you Blu-Tack them. Wite-Out has achieved the same status in the US as Tipp-Ex has in Britain (although I bet not 1 in 100 people know how to spell it).
I suspect he actually meant “Google” in the sense that someone who doesn’t know what fiber is probably won’t know what a library is either.
That battle is already over.