I should really have made the title of this piece, ‘Proper,’ nouns as verbs because I don’t intend to discuss that awful American habit of randomly using a noun as a verb. A piece in the tech pages caught my eye the other day. It was discussing the measurement of commercial success of a brand by the use of the brand name as a verb. The obvious examples are ‘google,’ and ‘skype’ (Lower case initial letters when used as verbs.) What was interesting was an inference that this was a new thing. It seems that the writer had not made the connection between this idea and, for example, ‘hoovering,’ the carpet, ‘sellotaping’ something, or ‘(tele-) phoning someone. There is also the matter of brand names becoming generic terms – we use a biro to write something, for example. (In Serbian, a radio comms set is a ‘motorola,’ and in Romanian, a refrigerator is a ‘frigeder – say it with a Spanish pronounciation.)
I’m sure the charioteers can come up with other examples, but what interested me is the implied sense that nothing happened before 1970, or so. There seems to be a disconnection somewhere in which anything that happened before the cultural revolution is discounted – in the air-headed chatterati expression, is ‘not relevant,’ or is ‘out-moded.’
That might go some way to explain why the country is in the mess it is. (On the other hand, of course, it might not 🙂 )
Boadicea's Chariot 
I actually can’t think of one off hand, we’ve never hoovered, bought a biro or even xeroxed anything! (My spellchecker likes hoover and xerox but not biro! Do you think it’s American? 🙂
Perhaps here it’s due to sanctions and our remoteness (in the pre-net age) from the rest of the world. I’ll put my thinking cap on, ask a few mates and hopefully come up with one for you later.
P.S. I hate the use of the word batter by cricket commentators
“….nothing happened before 1970.”
Tee hee, Bravo. This reminds me that when I was fifteen I thought that my parents knew nothing, but when I was twenty-five I was amazed at how much they had picked up in the intervening decade. 🙂
OZ
There are numerous common nouns that are used as verbs: carpeted, soldiered and shouldered, for example. But the use of proper nouns appears to be rarer, though I can think of a couple that predates 1970: Boycotting and Maffiking. Within a commercial context I suggest that not many brands lend their names to being ‘verbalised’. It would be clumsy to say that you Concorded across the Atlantic, Boeinged into Heathrow or TGVed to Paris despite the obvious meaning of such terms. Hoover, Twitter and Google work well; Facebook much less so. I believe that a major reason that Microsoft paid so much for Skype was that is has become the generic term for VOIP and as such it represents a great deal of brand value. I suspect that while Hoover became the default term for vacuum cleaner by accident, marketing people are now very much conscious of the benefits of associating a brand name to a particular activity and choose names accordingly. I bet Microsoft employees are encouraged to ‘Bing’ rather than ‘Google’. Apart from those you have mentioned, I cannot think of a commercial brand that became a verb prior to 1970.
Sipu, ‘brillcream?’
Brillcream!!! What is that? A mod thing? I lived a sheltered life on an African farm, so forgive me for not being au fait with such a term.
I am sure my dear old Mum hoovered the carpet long before 1970.
FEEG – she did!
Akshully Soutie, it’s French. 🙂
And I expect she ‘phoned someone on occasion. 😀
Telephone is not a brand name or any sort of proper noun, Bravo – or do you know something that I don’t? 😕
This is bothering me… I knew all about Hoover etc, but I’m sure there must be many other examples that I just can’t think of just now….
‘Stove’ is a proper noun used as a generic term for a cooker… but not as a verb.
Feeg’s mum, that is.
Ah, true.
Sorry, but no, it isn’t, Pseu.
Slightly away from the subject, it always sets my teeth on edge when you ask someone how they and you get the reply ‘good.’ It seems to have become the ‘in’ way of speaking! Horrible!
Sorry:’ how they are’
Yes. I thought ‘stove’ was one of those Old English v Norman French thingies.
Zen – that is the Australian response – “good, thanks”. Other English speakers in other countries should not use it, it’s bad grammar in their dialects (but OK in ours). 😆
My oven is called a Stove… a proper noun, a company called Stove made it. I always assumed that is had become part of the language because of this…
So thanks anyway for the lesson, Bearsy!
http://www.stoves.co.uk/products
T’other way round, I think, Pseu
The word stove has been around for yonks – ‘undreds of ’em.
I tried Googling for your company, but couldn’t find it. 😦
Aw, shucks, you know me Pseu, always ready to play the pedant. 😀
Hmm, thanks for the link.
So we have Stoves coffee-makers, and Stoves warming drawers (that’d keep your bum cosy in the winter).
Try Wiki !! 🙂
Stoves with an S both ends, and a cap at the start 🙂
I thought the guy who invented the ballpoint pen was Hungarian 🙂
László Bíró, the inventor of the ballpoint pen, was indeed Hungarian.
Without checking, I would nominate Mesmerise (or it’s alternative spelling) as the oldest.
Franz Anton Mesmer was around long before the Hoover, or the Biro.
Why I am able to produce his full name from memory is a complete mystery to me.
At two removes, there’s ‘sandwich.’
I was akshully referring to my spellchecker 🙂
Bravo: To be sandwiched? Only if you accept that “Awful American habit” of using a noun for a verb 🙂
Bravo: I’ll drop this one in as my last shot. “to christen”
LW. Proper nouns as verbs… ‘sandwich’ after the eponymous Earl, ‘to sandwich…’ from there, hence, at two removes? 😀
Bravo: Sorry, my attempt at wit. Proper noun ‘Sandwich’ to common noun ‘sandwich’, thence by “awful..habit etc.” noun ‘sandwich’ to verb ‘sandwich’. Latter just like noun ‘impact’ to verb ‘impact’ :0
I quite liked Christ, christen.
But then again I quite like “gotten” which the English have almost “forgotten”.
W-e-e-e-e-ell, at the risk of being accused of tiresome pedantry, ‘impact’ isn’t a proper noun, either, innit?
Bravo: Both sandwich and impact are common nouns, both sandwich and impact are verbs, is one more acceptable than the other?
gerrymandering, ie altering borders of constituencies for illegal gain in votes. Early 19th C.
bowdlerisation, ie expurgate, 17C.
malapropism, ie transposition in language. 18th C.
dogberryism, Shakespear
All derived from people’s names but used as verbs and other parts of speech.
PS most of the chatteratti are morons, and ill educated morons at that! Should have had my old ma!
Ah, ‘boycott.’
LW, I did say at the second remove 🙂
Personally, I like tracking lexical growth, and I dislike the fallacy of etymology – the notion that the original meaning of a word is the only one that counts – because lexical growth is the linguistic footprint of an era.
Rapid communication, the digital age and consumerism mean that English is not just merging, growing and blending, as before, or even borrowing vocabulary from foreign sources, but it is now being swamped by lots of new words which are suddenly springing up all over the place. It is the effect of the double whammy of the digital age and consumerism on our vocabulary.
Having said that, I am a traditionalist when it comes to grammar. It is not taught any more in many schools, which means that the linguistic frameworks of Standard English are disintegrating far more rapidly than they should be. Hence the increasingly widespread use of proper nouns as verbs.
Claire – I entirely agree with your sentiment, but you are doing the word ‘etymology’ a disservice – it does not mean what you said it does. There are unfortunately many deluded ‘language purists’ who try to assert that the original meaning takes precedence, but they are wrong.
See Wiki for a true definition of etymology. 😀
Bravo: I like boycott it’s the exact word, not an -ism or an -ation.
Hi Bearsy.
I am aware of what etymology is, but what I refer you to is the particular school of thought that says that the starting point of a word’s linguistic growth is its only true point of reference – i.e. the fallacy of etymology…
See Wiki for a definition http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etymological_fallacy 🙂
Absolutely – it is a fallacy.
Nous sommes d’accord! 🙂
Eh ben.. voila. 🙂 sans l’accent, malheureusement…
another definition of ‘hoovering’ found while searching out the net for new proper nouns as verbs!
“A Hoover is a metaphor, taken from the popular brand of vacuum cleaners, to describe how an abuse victim, trying to assert their own rights by leaving or limiting contact in a dysfunctional relationship gets “sucked back in” when the perpetrator temporarily exhibits improved or desirable behavior.
Description:
The Hoovering metaphor comes from the popular Hoover brand of vacuum cleaners. Hoovering describes how a non-personality-disordered person, while attempting to escape an abusive situation, gets sucked back into the status quo.”
http://www.outofthefog.net/CommonBehaviors/Hoovering.html
Sorry Pseu, but the word Hoover, for some strange inexplicable reason, will for me be associated with the dodgy French waiter in Allo Allo.
So topical, bravo as I’ve just been reading a letter from my Aunty Sheila – in her eighties – who mentioned some chafer bug that was ruining her lawn and the grounds of Winchester Cathedral and exhorted me to “google it up” on the internet! 🙂
Searching the net rather than consulting one’s memory is exactly why the chatterati are so lacking!
Clare, frankly I despair if that is how you spend your time. I suggest the purchase of a good ‘lexicon’ might assist.
“The fallacy of etymology”
God give me strength!!
Osborne.
The’fallacy of etymology’ is a linguistic school of thought; it does not take Einstein to work out that I am not defending it, or attacking it, but merely pointing out its existence as part of the debate, nor does it take Socrates to work out that the ability to question through the use of facts and critical thinking is entirely reasonable and rational
As for the ‘lexicon’ -the dictionary, as I prefer to call it, not being in the habit of attempting to bolster myself, and discredit others by resorting to age old, singularly boring tactic of over using jargon and formal registers all at once…
Take your pick. I have eight. Well; seven, if you count the one I feel like chucking at your miserable, saggy old avatar.