Genericisms

When’s the last time you heard someone say, “let’s Skype”?

Skype used to be a verb, but now it’s not. Instead, we talk about Zooming one another, having replaced one semi-popular platform with an incredibly well-known new paradigm.

Skype is a trademark owned by Microsoft. When a trademark makes the leap from being the specific name of one particular product to a more general term for every similar product, that’s called a generic trademark, or genericization for short.

Sometimes a genericization will happen and a word will be widely adopted, only to see it replaced by another brand. That’s what happened with Zoom and Skype around 2020. Skype was only popular as a term for a few years, but it was around long enough for me to hear it become a very dominant verb.

This happened to the term Walkman during the early 2000s. When Apple released the iPod, it wasn’t a clean, instant replacement for the term Sony had come up with in 1979. Walkmans were huge in the 80s—certainly a big part of my musical education was via mixtapes listened to on Walkmans.

During the late 80s, I might have said, “Hang on, let me grab my Walkman” as we headed out on a road trip. In the same way, someone might say they never go anywhere without their iPod during the early to mid 2000s, and you’re far more likely to hear either iPod or mp3 player instead of Walkman today.

Skype has gone the way of the Walkman, being usurped by a more popular platform and its generic counterparts, but it took a lot less time for Skype to disappear. In this sense, it wasn’t a permanent takeover of the generic phrase, but “Walkman” was more permanent than “Skype.”

Xerox as a verb was around for a very long time, having even more staying power than the term Walkman during the 80s. “Hang on, I’ll Xerox that” was much more common than “I’ll make you a photocopy of that.” Like the Walkman, it wasn’t replaced by a better version of itself, but instead by a different type of technology; today, people just copy things with their ubiquitous smartphones or with scanners. We do things more with ones and zeroes than we do with paper or physical media these days.

Other genericisms have been more permanent takeovers of our language.

Take Band-Aid for an example. If you’ve got a cut on your finger, do you ask someone if they have an adhesive bandage, or do you ask for a Band-Aid? If you’re American, you’re almost certainly in the latter camp, but if you’re British, you probably call them plasters.

Band-Aid isn’t a complete takeover since people around the world call them other things, but the word swap has been very, very long-lasting. You might also include Q-Tips and ChapStick into this category as well—nearly all Americans think of them in those terms, but elsewhere they have different names.

Then, there are genericisms that are both permanent and geographically dominant takeovers. These are words that you don’t even recognize as being brands any more—they just became the word their brand used to represent.

Jacuzzi is one really good example. If someone tells you they have a Jacuzzi, you know what they mean (and you probably guess that their apartment smells of rich mahogany), but it’s the name of a private company that makes hot tubs.

Jet ski is another one that was prominent in the 80s, and it’s another brand name for a specific type of personal watercraft.

My favorite from among these is dumpster. Two brothers (last name: Dempster) patented a system of getting standardized trash containers onto garbage trucks. This process was called the Dempster-Dumpster system, and the containers were called Dumpsters. This one catches a lot of people off guard, myself included.

What are some of your favorite examples of genericisms, or brand names that have started to become the name of the thing itself? What are the most common generic trademarks where you live, and why do some of these brands become permanent word replacements, while others fade?

Help me think this through today, especially if you’re not located in the US. Half of Goatfury Writes readers are located outside the US, and I’m eager to hear your experiences today.