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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
The Jeep one has kind of fallen out of normal use. Like, I wouldn’t call a Land Rover or a Bronco a jeep.
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.
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
That was the original idea I think. With the existence of SUVs that kind of went out the window.
The Mercedes is the G-Wagon. Which is quite well known in pop culture as such.
Well thanks for the name I see rarely mostly on the freeway and every time I see it I’m like “there’s no way a bad guy doesn’t have a convoy of these”
I would have never in a million years guessed the name is g wagon tho
Well, the official name is G-Class (or G-Klasse in German). G-Wagen is a colloquial name. Wagen means vehicle in German, btw., where the G-Class isn’t known as G-Wagen at all.
The G is short for Geländewagen (off road vehicle) btw., so calling it G-Wagen is kinda like calling it an ATM-Machine.
Ah that makes sense
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.
It’s very common in Germany to call off-road vehicles jeeps
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.
Last time I heard it was in a dramatic re-enactment of a deposition where the witness did not know the word “photocopy” and the lawyer was not having it.
I mean the last time I heard it was in Bojack Horseman. They had an episode called “Xerox of a Xerox”
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 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.
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Where is hoover
Congressional cemetery
I’d maybe add Solo Cups.
That one is weird for us Aussies since a ‘Solo’ for us is a local lemon squash drink
Hearing ‘Solo Cup’ I just think of a cup of Solo haha
Here it’s a big cup, typically at a house party and holding alcohol.
The red ones? We have those too but I think they’re just called party cups. Put some Solo in there and you’d have a Solo Solo Cup!
Yep. And the reason I mentioned it is because I just bought some generic red cups from Target and got asked where the Solo Cups came from.
Chapstick goes all the way back to the 1880’s? Holy shit!
Losing yo-yo right before the centennial anniversary is pretty funny.
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?
Who says “zoom” as a verb? People say “video chat” or, more realistically, “facetime” for all video chats.
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.
I’ve heard a lot of people talk about “zoom meetings” when the meetings are actually held on google meet, or webx.
Who says “zoom” as a verb?
Zoomers.
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.
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?
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.
In the 80’s there was a brand of cough suppressant pills with codeine (prescription only) called Tussigon, as codeine is a an anti-tussive (anti-cough).
They’re still all over the place. It’s the main ingredient of lean.
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
I agree. If dump was a word before (I’ll have to check), then dumpster is a simple modification.
Wait until you learn about Thomas Crapper, who made major improvements to the modern toilet.
And his name wasn’t the origin of the word crap. It was just destiny!
Nominative determinism!
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.
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 😂
Ormagord, Sorper Morio Brorthers
Look again, it actually says Trumpster
Look again, it actually says Drumpster
Drumphster
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
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.
Roomba is a big one that is missing.
