One of their competitors almost made a similar mistake, but at the last minute decided not to go with “Ryder’s on The Storm”.
Doesn’t “Alliance” mean the same thing as “Party”?
Not in any dialect of English I’ve ever come across. But even if it did, the acronym would still be CCRA.
:dubious: OK, what is a political party, if not a kind of alliance?
Hyponymy is not synonymy. Just because A is a kind of B does not mean that A and B “mean the same thing”.
Yeah, yeah, I know that, but you also know what I meant.
I’m unimpressed with the recent beer commercials talking about “drinkability.” A little too close in my mind to saying that you should buy our beer because it won’t kill you.
Those bug me too. “Our beer has superior drinkability.” Yeah, as opposed to all those other beers mixed with broken glass and razor blades, I guess.
I took it as “our customers are too freakin stupid to understand our new slogan so we’ll explain it to you!”
It’s lucky for them I don’t do “light” anything or I’d switch to guzzling a brand without cute horsies as mascots
A few famous ones from Japan:
Calpis
Creap
Mazda Laputa (“la puta” = “the hooker” in Spanish.)
This one is a bit more obscure:
Drycapot
I can’t help reading it as “dry capotte”, a “capotte” being French slang for condom.
Snopes, in their article on the Nova, failed to mention something very important: Mexicans and Spanish-speakers in general love, love, love puns. Yes, “nova” and “no va” don’t sound exactly the same, but the London Olympics logo doesn’t exactly look like Lisa Simpson either…
Here are just a few examples of native Spanish writers discussing the Nova’s name:
http://mx.geocities.com/chevycavalierii/archivos/Chevy.htm
http://www.cac-bolivia.com/ver_noticia.php?cual=19
http://funversion.universia.es/humor/textos/traducciones_incorrectas.jsp
http://ares.cnice.mec.es/informes/12/contenido/pagina%20146.htm
And there are lots more…
At one point Advanced Microdevices was using the names of WWII Fighter aircraft as the internal names for their processors (i.e., Spitfire, Mustang, Thunderbolt…) This caused some friction when they started to build the processors in Dresden.
Oh yeah, how about the Navy (?) ads promoting the automated drones and other advanced technology that replace personnel in dangerous situations. Sure, great idea, and a good thing to focus on in advertisements. But then there’s the tagline, “working every day to unman the front lines.” I know what they mean, but the traditional definition of unmanis the first thing that springs to mind.
Thanks for those cites, jovan. Interesting stuff!
Yeah, I’m not real impressed by the Air Force ads with the Predator pilot. Apparently, Army grunts shake his hand and thank him all the time for saving their lives by warning them of an ambush up ahead or something. Then he’s wheeling out one of the drones and says something like, “The most amazing thing is I might save a life today.” Yeah–and then the guy you saved will kill ten people. I’m not seeing the humanitarian aspect of this.
The company that I work for once advertised that a gift was “nicer than a tie, not as nice as a Hummer”.
In Los Angeles, you can get a massage from a genuine hobo!
I’ve been yelling about this ad for months. Every time it comes on I have to say to the television, “Unman … I don’t think that word means what you think it means.”
Don’t blame Chevy for that one – Crossfire is a Chrysler model.
cornflakes: Think of it as “el PASS-o natural GAS”.
Back in the '60s, Chrysler made a “Crossfire” engine manifold for stock car racing. Each bank of cylinders was fed by intake runners that ran across the engine, and a massive plenum connected both banks of runners to the carburetor. Having such long runners was a good idea in theory, but according to Smokey Yunick, it was practically impossible to balance fuel mixture for each cylinder and to keep gas puddles from forming in the plenum. All the same, they are part of automotive lore, much like the Hemis from the 50s and 60s (The modern “Hemis” don’t have anything close to a true hemispherical combustion cylinder.)
p.s., thanks, Sternvogel
wunderjammer writes:
“Trojans” always bothered me, too, but for another reason – didn’t the Trojans LOSE that war, pretty clearly? Who the hell names a product after the losers?
I can see why they didn’t want to call them, say, “Greeks”. And “Achaeans” or “Danaans” or “Argives” would be too obscure. But to my mind calling them “Trojans”, even if it gives you an association with virile warriors, is asking too much.
“Stop by Wendy’s! Our burgers are edible!!”
This is as good a place as any for this –
I came across the worst copywriting I’ve seen in a long time today:
“Imagine a World Without Choice… You No Longer Have To!”
Exactly the opposite of what they intended to say. How does someone with this poor of a grasp of the English language end up writing copy for Hewlett Packard? It boggles the mind.