~10 years ago I would say “google it” often. But now I don’t think I say that at all, and would say “search for it” or similar.
I don’t think I really consciously decided to stop saying it, but I suppose it just felt weird to explicitly refer to one search engine while using another.
Just me? Do you say, or hear others say, “google it” in $current_year? Is it different for techies and normies?
I genuinely think we could one day reach a point where Google is no longer the dominant way to search for things, and yet people will still say “Google it”.
Yeah, happens all the time. Can’t think of an English example right now but the German verb for putting on makeup is “schminken” although nobody really knows the company “Schminke” anymore.
One English example is to “hoover” - people say it all the time when they mean using the vacuum cleaner, whether or not it’s made by Hoover.
Ever heard of hook and loop fasteners? The Velcro company would really like it if you called it hook and loop fasteners.
They REALLY would. (A few other examples are mentioned also)
“Jello” is a brand name, which I think may be the example most people in the US specifically don’t realize. There are tons of others.
I think “googling” counts because a) it kinda makes sense even without the branding, b) I hear it all the time, and c) I say it myself even though I haven’t used Google as my default search engine for ages.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generic_trademark
You know, I mostly only know the US examples of this and always assumed it was just more common here, now I’m wondering about generic trademarks around the world.
I know a few. Xerox is used for photocopying in other languages. Kleenex is the accepted term for “paper tissue” in Spain. Zodiac and Vespa are used for specific types of ship and motorcycle in multiple places, even when not manufactured by those brands. Thermos is a brand name, used in multiple countries as well. Sellotape is used in the UK for transparent sticky tape.
I don’t speak every regional variant of every language, but the short answer is this is definitely not a US thing. At all.
We definitely use all of those in the US as well, though I haven’t heard the Zodiac one. I was asking more for regional things like this rather than saying it was just something in the US.
In the US it’s Scotch tape, we never had that UK brand, so it’s unheard of as a generic also.
And Hoover is a brand, but I guess wasn’t as dominant, so nearly everyone just says vacuum as the verb.
Maybe I was thinking of cellophane
I have never heard a person say “hoover” as a verb
Really? Maybe it’s a UK thing, I dunno. Very, very common here :-)
They said English, but they mean British English.
I also use it in reference to hoovering up a fat line of blow into my schnozz
Do you have any reference for that? The internet claims that word is around since the 15th century.
I think I saw it on TV. Guess I was wrong.
You still have a point. Other examples would be “Nutella”, “Tesa”, “Edding”, famously also “Tempo”, “Zewa” …
“Selters” in the East for sparkling water. And I guess for the English language Champagne qualifies, although the clarification in this case even became a meme.
Just learnt of a new example today. In Australia a common kind of small tree is called a “wattle”. It’s flowers are yellow, everyone in Australia knows about them, and the flower is the floral emblem of the country (the yellow and green colours of Australian sports teams is probably from the flower too).
The name “wattle” however comes from “wattle and daub” (wikipedia), a method of construction that uses woven branches filled with some form of clay\cement like material such as mud. “Wattle” trees were ideal for and just used very often for “wattle and daub” building in early colonial times that it’s name became “wattle”, which generally refers to the woven branches. Now no one knows that construction technique or its name, but the know the tree’s name very well.
Otherwise, the save icon being a floppy disc is a clear visual example in technology that’s just now-ish passing beyond its redundancy.
It cracks me up that cars have a phone icon based on a handset style from an old home landline phone. I guess enough businesses still use them?
So does my iPhone for that matter.
So does my android, but I somehow find the icon in the car even more entertaining since it reminds me of when the first cars with mobile phones in the 80s actually had handsets!
I know for a fact I’ve said I was going to “Xerox some copies” on a machine that was almost certainly not manufactured by the Xerox Holdings Corporation.
https://www.nytimes.com/video/opinion/100000002847155/verbatim-what-is-a-photocopier.html
Xerox for making copies