Refurbished Dyson hoovers

lammy82

theonlywayisup said:

lammy82 said:

Yes soolin, thank you: that's exactly my point regarding brands used as generic terms. There are loads of them used in colloquial speech every day, it's perfectly normal to do it, and everyone does, including theonlywayisup!

No I don't.  

Of course I checked your post history before claiming that. Tarmac and jet ski are some examples. But if you carefully avoid trademarks and start referring to tarmacadam or asphalt concrete and "personal watercraft" then you're going to confuse people. 

martindow

theonlywayisup said:

English is not my first language which is probably why I try very hard not to use incorrect terminology (whether deemed 'perfectly normal' or not).  

There are plenty more brand names that have been adopted.   It can dent and dilute a brand.  Velcro fight hard against their name being used in this way.  It is why brand protection and copyright are big business. 

Companies fight hard to protect their brands from situations such as rivals passing off or using unauthorised sellers.

In everyday parlance though, the battle is lost and words like hoover, sellotape or velcro are in common use and have lost their initial capitals.  It is similar to grammatical matters where some people object to splitting infinitives, using their instead of his or her and ending sentences with prepositions.  People can choose to conform to their rules, but language changes as it always has.

You mention that your maternal language is not English, so no doubt there are examples there where vocabulary and grammar has evolved in a similar fashion.

soolin

lammy82 said:

Yes soolin, thank you: that's exactly my point regarding brands used as generic terms. There are loads of them used in colloquial speech every day, it's perfectly normal to do it, and everyone does, including theonlywayisup!

Normal but incorrect, a Dyson cannot be a Hoover, it is a vacuum cleaner (although I suspect with their new technology a pedant would argue it isn't technically a vacuum cleaner either) 

If asking for specific advice it might be confusing to use 2 brand names.

TripleH

It also might be different countries have a different name for products.

No obvious and specific examples spring to mind but Germany could have a different equivalent to "tarmac".

The best example I can think of is that email is a generic term used throughout the world (including France) except for Quebec where they have a long winded translation of what an email is into French to protect the language.

martindow

In France sellotape is called scotch after a different brand name.  I am sure there are many others in different countries.

jeffuk

BRITISH

verb

gerund or present participle: hoovering

1. clean (something) with a vacuum cleaner.

   "he was hoovering the stairs"

   • suck something up with or as if with a vacuum cleaner.

     "hoover up all the dust"
   • INFORMAL

     consume something quickly and eagerly.

     "he hoovered up three slices of cake"

martindow

jeffuk said:

BRITISH

verb

gerund or present participle: hoovering

1. clean (something) with a vacuum cleaner.

   "he was hoovering the stairs"

   • suck something up with or as if with a vacuum cleaner.

     "hoover up all the dust"
   • INFORMAL

     consume something quickly and eagerly.

     "he hoovered up three slices of cake"

I suppose that is definitive proof that a name has become generic when it becomes a verb - to hoover, to google, etc.