When a word enters the dictionary it is an honor of sorts, one would think. Not if the word is a commercial product with a trademark . When a commercial name enters the common parlance and is used as a generic noun or verb, the word loses its legal trademark protection. Which is why the same companies, which go to great lengths to advertise products in order to make them household names, also try very hard to prevent them from becoming a part of our everyday vocabulary.
"Branding experts said such notoriety is hardly a blessing for a corporate trademark. Companies go to extremes to prevent their trademark from falling into "common parlance" — a word that’s in everyday use, and no longer enjoys legal protection, said Rob Frankel, a Los Angeles consultant who has advised the Walt Disney Co., Honda Motor Co. and Sony Corp. on branding issues.
Xerox Corp., for instance, ran an ad campaign imploring people not to refer to every photocopying machine as a "Xerox." Attorneys for Johnson & Johnson advised the company to change the jingle for its adhesive bandage from "I am stuck on Band-Aid ’cause Band-Aid’s stuck on me" to include the word "brand" after the corporate name — in the interest of safeguarding its trademark.
"It goes ‘I am stuck on Band-Aid brand ’cause Band-Aid’s stuck on me,’ " said Frankel. "That is why they did that."
Most commercial words take from ten to twenty years to make it into the dictionary. But the power of the World Wide Web has shortened that waiting period considerably. Newly coined technical (and cultural) words are now propagated at a much faster rate and gain acceptance almost instantly. An example of such rapid recognition and wide usage is "Google" which entered the 2006 edition of the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary as a verb – with a small "g".
"Google is officially a verb.
Google Inc.’s eponymous search engine became a sanctioned part of the English language Thursday when "google" — small "g" — earned an entry among the 165,000 or so terms in the 11th edition of the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary.
The definition: "to use the Google search engine to obtain information … on the World Wide Web." As in, "let me google that."
Linguists said google is among the fastest words to enter the lexicon. It reached the pages of the dictionary just five years after its first known reference as a verb in a New York Post article. Usually, it takes 10 to 20 years for a word to enter everyday use."
A sampling of a few (all nouns) among the nearly 100 words to have entered Merriam Webster in 2006: (If you go to the M-W Inc. website, you can check out a partial list. To get the full list, you must read the book!)
biodiesel: a fuel that is similar to diesel fuel and is derived from usually vegetable sources (as soybean oil)
drama queen: A person given to often excessively emotional performances and reactions
dreamscape: A dreamlike, usually surrealistic scene
empty suit : An ineffectual executive
himbo: An attractive but vacuous man (a male bimbo).
mouse potato: a person who spends a great deal of time using a computer (after couch potato)
polyamory: The state or practice of having more than one open romantic realationship at a time
sandwich generation: a generation of people who are caring for their aging parents while supporting their own children
soul patch: a small growth of beard under a man’s lower lip
Accidental Blogger 
3 responses to “Fast Track To Merriam-Webster”
I find this kind of disappointing. I’ve been complaining loudly and bitterly for the past couple years when people use “google” as a substitute for “internet search” — but now they are (arguably) not incorrect!
Interesting topic, though.
And I definitely approve of the creation of words such as “polyamory” and “biodiesel.” They just seem to make sense.
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Hi Joe. Long time no see!
Hmm… aren’t you a little too young to be making sense of “polyamory”?
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Hi Ruchira. It feels good to be commenting here again!
Hahaha, I’m having a fit of laughter over “making sense of polyamory.”
On a slightly more serious note, I think that may be a prejudice I acquired from the Old English – Beowulf course sequence I took last year. It’s unbelievably easier to understand words when they’re composed of smaller words, as is the case with poly-amory/many-love.
Words like geardagum (“yore-days”), or “battle-warrior,” “spear-warrior,” “victory-warrior,” they’re all over the place in that poetry, and it’s much easier to learn the roots and put them together than to have to memorize extra formulations.
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