The Dumpster Brothers? Their last fucking name was Dumpster? Wild that that was just a common last name with no connection to trash for centuries
Look again, it actually says Dempster
Both words are used, so I understand the confusion; also, sprinkled with a little misspelling:
Dumpster: The Dempster Brorthers, Inc.
EDIT: Just read the Dumpster Wikipedia page. The Dempster Brothers' had a truck called The Dempster Dumpmaster 😂
On cold nights, we’d gather together around the Dempster fire and discuss how bad things were, we’d share drinks and bond as the we burned the garbage to stay warm on those cold nights. No one could turn away for those Dempster fires as they were amazing to watch. Yep Everyone loved watching those Dempster fires
It's kind of indicative that the courts have bent to corporations on not generciding names for nearly 60 years. How long have dumpsters been so ubiquitous that no one even knew it was a brand? Very Berenstain Bears situation.
I agree. If dump was a word before (I'll have to check), then dumpster is a simple modification.
Zoom was actually a word before 2011
Trademarks are context sensitive, and zoom was not used as a term for video calls before that. It is interesting that that's the only one on the list that isn't also a made up word
Über is also not made up 👀
Where do you draw the line between made up words and non-made up words? It’s not like a supernova explosion creates new words that land on a forming planet so that a billion years later a new sentient species can just pick them up from the ground and start using them.
True, but it has gained additional meaning and uses. Before 2011, you could not "join a zoom", for example.
The TV series was in 1972
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoom_(1972_TV_series)?wprov=sfla1
And uber was before 2009.
Not to mention many of these are literally still brand names and have not in fact been ruled generic.
Oh I see now they've made the generic ones dark grey.
The Jeep one has kind of fallen out of normal use. Like, I wouldn't call a Land Rover or a Bronco a jeep.
If anything Jeep on this list is backwards. It was originally a generic term for that military style vehicle made by various manufacturers. Then it became its own thing as the Jeep brand. But then Jeep further broadened their offerings ( Cherokee, Patriot, compass, etc) and the Jeep became a wrangler. But when I say I drive a Jeep, everyone assumes specifically a wrangler.
When I read that my initial thought was more like a military jeep or any boxy army vehicle
My second thought was that one Mercedes jeep but that’s clearly not a jeep brand
It's very common in Germany to call off-road vehicles jeeps
Yeah, I thought the word Jeep originally came from the military initials GP - General Purpose vehicle. The generic term 4x4 (four by four) is pretty common in the UK.
Who says "zoom" as a verb? People say "video chat" or, more realistically, "facetime" for all video chats.
I've heard a lot of people talk about "zoom meetings" when the meetings are actually held on google meet, or webx.
I've used Zoom in previous companies to speak to clients, and have never heard anyone use it as a term for video calls. I have absolutely no idea where this has come from, but it's definitely not true...
I've met a lot of people who do this through my work from home job
I work in tech. Everyone.
No one I know would use facetime... That suggests using a phone for a business meeting. Bad angles, shakey image.. very unprofessional.
For a business meeting you need a computer which means we're zooming, regardless of the platform
Let's do a zoom meeting can conceivably be on Teams I guess
Yeah, it seems like facetime would be more at risk for becoming generic. If it weren't for Apple, that is.
Who says "zoom" as a verb?
Zoomers.
Has 'zoom' become a generic term for video calling/conferencing? For example are people saying "let's zoom later on Skype" ?
I hear FaceTime used more generically than Zoom (for mobile video chat)
I've heard people say Google zoom call. 🤪
I always hear people say “meets”, “FaceTime”, etc.. Zoom is definitely the most popular but I wouldn’t consider a generic term.
Sometimes my boss will use mention "zoom" when scheduling a virtual meeting between us and clients, but we choose which platform we use and most of us don't use zoom. So its sorta being used like that.
Super Hero is trade marked??? That one was surprising.
I had no idea that a lot of those were brand names
That's why when someone says "they have to protect their IP otherwise they lose it", they're full of shit. The bar for losing a trademark is essentially that no one can be reasonably expected to know it was a trademark.
When was the last time you heard someone use the term 'Xerox?'
iirc, it's used as another word for clone in some 1980's science fiction.
Arguably it's a bit dated but I don't think it's gone completely the way of the dinosaur.
The legend I've heard is that the Xerox company built the first PC, complete with mouse, monitor, printer, and keyboard, but couldn't figure out how to market it. They let anyone come and see it, and kids like Jobs and Gates stole it for themselves. Maybe in the future, 'xerox' will mean 'didn't know a good thing when you had it." She dated that guy and dumped him right before he won the lottery. What a xerox!
This aptly describes both paper copying and the name applied to it.
Probably in the '90s, early 2000s. Usually it would be a teacher saying they needed to go make a Xerox/some xeroxes. I'm pretty sure some of those schools didn't actually have a Xerox-brand machine. I think most people say going to make a copy now, and it doesn't seem to be done nearly as often as it was 10 years ago.
Yup. By the early 00s it was rare to hear someone say xerox something but it was still pretty common in the late 90s. Offices in the military and civilian-military world.
I mean the last time I heard it was in Bojack Horseman. They had an episode called "Xerox of a Xerox"
I'll have to look that one up
I sometimes call in to an office to use their facilities and Melanie on reception will almost invariably ask me if I’m there to do some “ex a rock sing” (xeroxing) and I say yes and then ask if the “ex a rock” machine is in the usual place. We’ve been laughing at this one joke for over twenty years. Perhaps we should get out more?
It's the name for photocopy in India. Nobody would know what you mean if you say I need a photocopier.
I am reminded of the scene in the first 'Dr. Strange' movie where he goes into an ashram and gets the Wi-Fi password.
No Coke?
Typical exchange in Texas:
Person A: Can I have a coke?
Person B: What kind?
Person A: Dr Pepper
As if Coca-Cola would ever allow that to happen. They'd send death squads against the court that even thought about it.
I'm going to watch a Disney! 😄
Using "coke" as a generic word for soft drinks is very regional in the US. In a large part of the country you would get a funny look if you referred to some other brand as a coke. The law office that made this is in Colorado, and it looks like they're solidly in "pop" territory.
I've never heard Google, Uber or Zoom used unless it meant the specific company. "Google" became a verb, but I've never heard of someone saying they googled something on DuckDuckGo, for example.
"Google it" means look it up on the Internet. My kids don't use Chrome, they use Google (probably call it that because it's the homepage of Chrome).
I've heard people say they're going to uber home. They sometimes use Lyft.
And I've definitely heard people say they were on a zoom call even when it was Microsoft Teams or Google ...what is the Google one called again? I don't remember anymore because people will say Google zoom call!!
I use it exactly like that all the time.
nice try, google-lawyer.
You've never heard zoom used as a regular word to mean fast? The word itself is older than the program.
Obviously I mean only in the specific context of "a video conference call."
Vaseline, Velcro, Mace and Styrofoam aren't generic? The fuck? I didn't even know those were trademarked names. Vaseline maybe, but the other three are common enough that I was sure they were generic.
Petroleum jelly, hook and loop, pepper spray, and polystyrene.
polystyrene-foam
The one that got me was zipper. What else do you call one?
It was previously commercialized as Lightning Fastener in NA, or hookless fastener in contrast with previous "technology".
Non-english languages sometimes have other words for it, if they encountered it before the Zipper was widespread. In Spanish we have cremallera and cierre. Old timers say fecho-de-correr or "fecho eclair" in Portuguese, referring to another patent holder Éclair Prestil.
Velcro brand doesn't want anyone to call the invention Velcro to protect the trademark: https://youtu.be/rRi8LptvFZY
Wait, are these the dates when the brand that eventually was deemed a "common word" were first trade marked? I was reading this as the years they were deemed common words.
Cause 2011 is WAYYYY too early for zoom to be common. If anything, that would've been Skype on 2011. Similar thing for Tupperware and zipper.
Also, wtf was heroin's common name before being branded heroin? Lol, also, I can't help but imagine heroin got its name as some kind of "there's a hero in every needle" marketing campaign.
year the brand name was first introduced.
It says so in the legend. Zoom has been a word for a long time but it now also means "participate in a (video) teleconference", which is a new meaning directly linked to the zoom software released in 2011. When a word became generic is usually very hard to pinpoint exactly (except for zoom that was 2020)
For heroin: I don't think there was heroin before the introduction of the heroin brand. Bayer literally invented the substance. (Wikipedia says it was invented 23 years earlier in Britain from morphine, but the inventer didn't do anything with it so it was reinvented later). It was also not a drug you take to get high, it was an over the counter cough suppressant; no needle or spoon or lighter involved. Wild times for sure...
It was diacetyl morphine before Bayer marketed it. Fun fact; the acetyl groups get cleaved before it binds to a receptor so it's just plain old morphine again.
Derp, thanks for pointing out the legend. Totally missed it as I gave the thing a once over.
But also, obviously this means heroin's name must come from "a hero in every pill"
It's from the German word "heroisch", which is basically "heroic". They used it being a homonym for "heroine" to use women heroes or Valkyrie in marketing for a bit, because it'll save you from that nasty cough.
It didn't really go by anything before, since it's not something super easy to make, and so the first people to really make a lot of it was Bayer, and they named it heroin.
Before heroin people had morphine, and heroin had been made as "diamorphine", but it just wasn't really a thing.
I try to avoid using all these names and instead use the more generic names.
What do you use for zipper, super hero, and trampoline?
Okay, maybe not all of them but honestly that's because I didn't know they were brand names
In the UK: Hoover is what everyone called their vacuum cleaner. Can't stop for tea, I have the hoovering to do at home
Have you ever hoovered schneef?
Nope, had to wet-vac it up cuz people spilled their Tim's on it
Allegedly
I think it used to be more of a generic word for vacuuming in the US. I used to know a dog named Hoovie. Not sure why that seems to have lessened.
Losing yo-yo right before the centennial anniversary is pretty funny.
Roomba is a big one that is missing.
Aspirin & Heroin: Bayer
lost rights to its trademarks as a result of WWI
Thanks Gavrilo Princip. Do you know how much potential revenue you erased from the Bayer balance sheet?
Hoover
It's not used as a generic trademark in the US and the chart says it was made by an attorney in the US state of Colorado, presumably for an American audience. There's a chance the creator of the chart has never even heard of a vacuum cleaner being called a "hoover" if it wasn't a Hoover-brand vacuum.
The first time I saw a Brit mention hoovering their house I misunderstood and thought they were claiming they had made their house float in the air.
Something I find interesting, lino was replaced by vinyl which was worse and plasticy but cheaper and the name carried over.
Most people when they think of floor lino thinka actually of vinyl rather than the actual original!
Vinyl is horrible, but I really like LVP. I guess the solution was more vinyl.
Wait what? Peoole call pvc flooring linoleum?
I wish this graphic had the old name as well.
'Real estate agent'
I'm surprised how long yo-yo lasted
And that Frisbee still has
Chapstick goes all the way back to the 1880's? Holy shit!
Where is hoover
Congressional cemetery
That was a good almost 100 year run, yo-yo.
Missing Hoover
I dunno, I don't know anyone who doesn't call it a vacuum. I know people who own Hoover's and they still call it their vacuum.
It has certainly fallen out of favor, similarly to Xerox. It used to be the primary way people referred to vacuum cleaners.
It's probably American biased. In the US it's commonly called a 'vacuum' or 'vacuum cleaner.' 'Hoover' is not used much in US.
Only in UK.
I suppose a tweet isn’t a Twitter.
I suppose a toot isn't a Mastodon.
Haha I meant, I guess that’s why Twitter isn’t on the list. Since the name itself didn’t become part of our vocabulary.
This is fucking hook and loop.
Onesie??? For real? All the others i already knew, but that one got me.
Can you explain zipper then? What's one called besides zipper?
I find it interesting how all but a few are two syllables. I don't think that's a coincidence.
J'en ai compté 29 qui marchent aussi en français.
