So many bon mots and phrases popped out of the editorial page of Today’s Wall Street Journal! Rather than starting a batch of new threads, I’ll collect them here and we can react to those that trigger interest. Everything following is a quotation.
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Talk in recent days of an internal coup overturning Saddam carries an ominous tone. The “silver bullet” approach was first mooted during the Gulf War by the CIA, when it predicted, with its usual accuracy, that Saddam would be deposed within two months by disgruntled senior officers. ... The danger with a coup is that some new Baathist thug would simply take his place. Saddam-lite is not the answer to Iraq’s problems – or to those of the Arab world.

President Bush finally decided to intervene in the West Coast dock strike yesterday ... It isn’t as if the union hasn’t had ample opportunity to right this sinking ship. ... The dockworkers [have] control over a key economic bottleneck.

Analyzing intelligence information can be like trying to take a sip of water coming out of a fire hydrant. … important bits have been plucked from a sea of thousands and thousands of such bits at that time.

the sclerotic bureaucracy of Unesco ... a conference ominously titled “Intangible Heritage: A Mirror of Cultural Diversity” … Intangible Heritage? Who could craft a more murky notion for hoovering off tax dollars?

Predictably, though, the conference was suffused with criticism of American cultural dominance ... The legend of bien-pensant intellectual support for “victimized” minorities

[Headline] Republican Dares Touch the Third Rail – and Lives

The Democrats and their acolytes in the press and academia have donned their fright wigs again, babbling constantly about recession. ... An interesting thought, that, remindful of that old apocalypse movie, "The Day the Earth Stood Still." ... The slumping stock market, emulated by most other bourses around the world, is of course a drag on public confidence.

A single-frame cartoon:

A bank of ten very tall and, apparently, highly complex computers, seven to the left and three to the right of a grizzled old man sitting on a stool beneath a single hanging light bulb. The man is wearing an old green eye shade and, with a quill pen, is transferring information from the computer to his left over to the computer to his right.

A team of efficiency experts surveys the scene and its leader says, "Hmmm... I think we've found our bottleneck."

silver bullet That's an interesting term. I have always wondered the derivation of it because we use in in pharmacology all the time. For example vancomycin is the silver bullet for staph infections--meaning the best there is.

The AHD (www.dictionary.com) gives two definitions for "silver bullet":
1. An infallible means of attack or defense.
2. A simple remedy for a difficult or intractable problem.

It doesn't seem to be used this way all the time, though. A Washington Post article says, "NASA's Mars team was poised to try one last "silver bullet" – a last-ditch effort between midnight and dawn Tuesday – to contact their missing Mars Polar lander on the Red Planet". If a silver bullet were an infallible solution, then NASA would need only one. It sounds like they've used several in this case, and they are not at all sure this "last" one will work. (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/daily/dec99/mars6.htm)

The AHD says the term comes from "the belief that werewolves could be killed with silver bullets". Of course, the Lone Ranger carried silver bullets and we know his were always effective.

Tinman

[This message was edited by tinman on Wed Oct 9th, 2002 at 18:53.]

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hoovering off tax dollars

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Interesting. Here in the UK we often use hoover as a generic term for vacuum cleaners, irrespective of make. We will also talk about "hoovering the stairs" and "hoovering up food". I understood that this is not the case in the US generally. However, The Wall Street Journal has used it in their article. Is the author perchance British?

Good question, arnie. Now if i could just find the paper ...

I vaguely recall that people used to speak of bisselling a carpet, after the old Bissel mechanical carpet sweeper, but I haven't heard that term in years. The terem hoovering also sounds odd to my ear.

I've heard people say, "hoovering," but not in a long time. Perhaps here in the USA, we came to associate the name, "Hoover" with the late dictator of the Federal Bureau of Investigation instead of the vacuum cleaner.

I've always assumed that the term, "Silver Bullet" derives from the old Lone Ranger radio, and later, television program. The Lone Ranger loaded the cartridges of his six-shooter with silver bullets as a way to let the bad guys know who shot them. Uhhh, I guess I'm showing my age by remembering this! Anyway, it's just a short mental hop to the idea that a powerful medicine is a silver bullet.

I have a particular aversion to this and never use the expression "hoover" when I mean vacuum cleaner. Indeed, since Hoover did not invent the thing (it was yet another British invention) there seems no reason at all for its having become a generic term.

Neither do I use "Biro" when I mean a ballpoint pen; "Thermos" when I mean a vacuum flask or "Barbour" when I mean a waxed-cotton jacket. Indeed, I never knowingly use trade names as generics since I would be, by implication, restricting my choice to the products of the brand-owner.

Would that others do the same!

Richard English

I think the NASA people misued the "Silver Bullet" metaphor since it has always (to my mind, anyway) implied a sure thing. There was a fairly famous movie from the 40's or 50's starring Edward G. Robinson called "Dr. Erlich's Silver Bullet" about the discovery of the cure for syphlis. As I recall, the tone of the movie implied that the good doctor had made sex safe for humanity, once and for all. Ah, the good 'ol days!

RE, if you should ask anyone here in the states for a "vacuum flask" you will be rewarded with, at best, a blank look. "Thermos bottle" has long been the term in popular use which, along with "linoleum" and "yo-yo" and several dozen others started out as brand names but which, through use (and, you're correct, misuse) found their ways into the dictionary.

I agree with Richard English that brand names ought not to be generalized. Not too long ago Coca-Cola sued to have vendors of other colas enjoined from using "Coke" as a generic term. Although I'm no lover of monopolistic businesses and/or corporations, I laud Coca-Cola's efforts. And, of course, we have "Xerox," whose proces for photocopying generalized, and there's "Kleenex."

Now, can anybody explain to me why we in the USA call a torch a flashlight? It seems to imply terrible reliability! It's true that many of them can be flashed for signaling purposes, but is that whe main use? Nooooo!

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And, of course, we have "Xerox," whose proces for photocopying generalized, and there's "Kleenex."

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Both of which are not used as generic terms here in the UK. We talk about "photocopying" and "tissue", even though the brand names you mention are the leaders in their fields over here, too.

Like Richard, I try to avoid the use of brand names as generics for the same reasons. However, with a few there is no real choice; CJ mentioned "linoleum" -- although most people here call it "lino" -- and "yo-yo", to which I would add "aspirin" and "nylon".

Let's not forget Band-aids!

Aspirin, although originally a German brand name, is now used to denote any medicine made from acetylsalicylic acid - and to my mind that's probably a good thing!

Nylon, though, although an invented word is not, I understand, a brand name.

Richard English

"Band-Aid" over here is not used as a generic name. However, many people use another brand name in its place: "Elastoplast".

Nylon, though, although an invented word is not, I understand, a brand name.
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I suspect that E.I. DuPont would disagree! They concocted the word for that polymer, just as they did with Rayon, (stolen directly from the French word for thread) Orlon, Teflon, and on and on and on...

The Xerox people used to run ads in "The Writer's Digest" imploring people not to write, for example, "He xeroxed the report" or "She made 20 xeroxes of the letter" since this is primarily how trademarks become generic terms. Other former trademarks listed, all of which are now "just" words, were escalator, trampoline, raisin bran, dry ice, cube steak, high octane (that one surprised me), kerosene (ditto), lanolin, linoleum, shredded wheat, corn flakes, mimeograph, and yo-yo. Undoubtedly, there are many more.

In another issue from the 80's (meaning my subscription has long since expired but I still cling to old issues; don't ask me why) there was a list of trademarks which are presently in danger of losing their distinction as such along with the terms that the trademark holders would prefer that you use:

"Band-Aid" = adhesive bandage
"Jell-O" = geletin dessert
"Kitty Litter" = cat-box filler
"Kleenex" = tissue
"Magic Marker" = pen (doesn't seem adequate to me)
"Vaseline" = petroleum jelly
"Levi's" = denim jeans

I think the ship has already sailed on a number of others they listed:

"Laundromat" = coin-operated laundry (I had never even considered "Laudromat" as anything other than a born-in-the-dictionary word.)

"Day-Glo" = daylight florescent color (Good luck! The more pithy "Day-Glo" is obviously the winner.)

"Rolodex" = desktop file
(as in "It's in the desktop file."
"It's in the what?"
"It's in the rolodex."
"Oh, OK. Why didn't you say so?!"

"Stetson" = hat (Yeah, right! "The cowpoke rode into town wearing a hat." Great atmosphere.)

"Scotch tape" = transparent tape (OK) or pressure-sensitive tape (not so OK)

"Styrofoam" = plastic foam (see comment under Rolodex.)

"Tobasco" = pepper sauce ("He spilled the styrofoam cup of tobasco into my rolodex.")

Or, the worst example:

"Muzak" = environmental music or sound masking. (File this under "No way, Jose!" "Muzak," with all its negative conotations, is "Muzak" and I say to hell with it!

I believe Xerox, Jello, Kleenex and Scotch Tape still have their legal protection as trademarks. Here's a list found of terms which were originally trademarks, but have now "gone generic" under the law: aspirin, brassiere, gellophane, celluloid, corn flakes, corselet, escalator, granola, gunk, heroin, jeep, jungle gym, kerosene, linoleum, mimeograph, nylon, pogo stick, saran wrap, shredded wheat, tabloid, thermos, yo-yo, zipper

It is interesting to me to see various brand names used in England that I would never hear in the United States. For example Hoovering, Biro, Barbour.

Richard, along with Aspirin (acetylsalycilic acid), Tylenol (acetaminophen).

Lastly, Asa, why would Coca Cola want to sue for that? Isn't it free advertising when we use brand names for products? I would think that they would love it. However, I agree with the rest of you, I hate it (though I say Kleenex, Jello, Xerox, Bandaid, Thermos (vacuum flask????), Yo-Yo, Nylon, Scotch tape, Laundromat. Some of these I didn't even know were brand names, such as "Laundromat

[This message was edited by Kalleh on Sat Oct 12th, 2002 at 10:04.]

Coca-Cola would sue if someone asked for a "Coke" and was given a Pepsi-Cola or other cola without comment. They expect the vendor to say something like, "Sorry, we don't stock Coke, but we do have Pepsi, would you like that instead?"

They have good reasons, not least of which is protecting their trade mark. If people start using "coke" as a generic name for cola they lose the trade mark.

My understanding on the "Coke" item....

At least here in the U.S., there are a few terms for "soft drinks". In Buffalo, we refer to soft drinks as "pop". Many areas of the country use this term. Other areas use "soda". But my understanding, especially in the south, they refer to all soft drinks as "Coke".

"The 'silver bullet' approach was first mooted during the Gulf War ..."
"An interesting thought, that, remindful of that old apocalypse movie ... "

Pardon me, but is this a correct use of the word "mooted"?
Pardon me, but is there such a word as "remindful"?

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Pardon me, but is this a correct use of the word "mooted"?
Pardon me, but is there such a word as "remindful"?

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Yes and not really.

AHD gives for the verb form of moot:

1. To bring up as a subject for discussion or debate
2. To discuss or debate.

As for the abomination remindful, apparently it means tending or adapted to remind; careful to remind (Webster) or serving to bring to mind (WordNet).

I was reading HW & FG Fowler's The King's English earlier and he gives this quote:

    He was in some amazement at himself... remindful of the different nature... -- Meredith.

The brothers Fowler suggest this was an unconcious error, what he meant was mindful. They say that remindful should surely mean 'which reminds' not 'who remembers'.

Reviving a thread on generic brands...

It is fun sometimes to revive these old threads. In this one we talked about a lot of products that have become generic names, and just today, in Bierma's language column, I found the name for that: antonomasia. Its Greek roots mean "against" and "to name." Have you ever heard of it? I hadn't.

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Have you ever heard of it? I hadn't.

Nor I. It looks like the modern-day equivalent of an inkhorn word.