FRIGIDAIRE and KLEENEX (was ICE BOX)

[Laurence Horn]

At 12:21 PM -0500 3/1/05, ronbutters at AOL.COM wrote:
>the issue is nor just what people say but what they KNOW. IT seems
>clear to me that most people know that KLEENEX is a brand name and
>that it is merely used by speakers in a shorthand way to refer to
>paper tissues (toilet tissue is a compound, by the way).

But is this really any different from knowing that "drink" sometimes
denotes an imbibable liquid and sometimes an imbibable alcoholic
liquid?  Or that "color" can include or exclude black and white?  Or
that "guys" can pick out males sometimes but be gender-nonspecific
other times, and so can "gays"?  Or that _Frau_ in German and _femme_
in French may pick out women in general or just wives?  Or that a
Yankee is anyone from the U.S., or more specifically someone from the
northern states, or more specifically someone from New England, or...?

Isn't this just the garden variety autohyponymy that often results
from broadening and narrowing? What (most) English speakers know, I
submit, is that "Kleenex" is a name for a certain brand of tissue and
also that it's a generic essentially equivalent to "tissue"; what
they know about "Scotties" and "Puffs" is that they have the former
sort of meaning and not the latter.  There is a case to made for some
of these distinctions involving uses rather than senses, but I think
with most of those derived generics the line has been crossed.   (And
to respond to the question, there are at least some google hits for
"Canon xerox machines", "Scotties kleenex", "Curad band-aids", and
the like, while in other cases--"kitty litter", "crock pot",
"spackle"--any knowledge of the brand name origin of the generic has
essentially disappeared from the speech community.)

larry