Grandma Girl here, I'm a neon-fogority and you can think of me as your friendly guide to

the English language. We talk about writing, history, rules, and cool stuff. Today we'll

talk about words that started as trademarks about how to actually write the phrase,

do's and don'ts, and eat shoots and leaves.

One of our listeners was reading an article in the Atlantic about the history of the film

and camera company Kodak. He was surprised to find that Kodak-ing was once used as a

verb meaning to take photographs. That got us thinking about other trademark

names that have been used so often for so long they've practically become generic. So

let's walk through some. We'll start our journey in the pharmacy aisle.

First of all, we have band-aids. That's spelled with a capital B and capital A with a

hyphen between the two words. Band-aid is a Johnson & Johnson trademark for those sticky

things you put on a cut. The name is so embedded in our vocabulary that is hard to describe

a band-aid without using that name. But give Johnson & Johnson credit back in 1920, they

were the first to put adhesive tape and gauze together in one product. Before that,

people would put a hunk of cotton on a wound, wrap a piece of cloth around it, and tie

it off, not very convenient. We also have Chapstick and Vaseline. Chapstick is owned by

GlacsoSmithCline, Vaseline by Unilever. If you wonder why these terms seem so generic,

it's because they've been around since the late 1800s. Chapstick was invented by a Virginia

pharmacist in the 1890s, Vaseline by a New York chemist in 1870. So we've been talking

about these trademarks for around 130 years. Today, these terms seem so universal that we

barely realize they're actually trademarks for lip balm and petroleum jelly, respectively.

And just like band-aids are a brand of adhesive bandages, Q-tips are a type of cotton swab

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