Is GENERICIDE a bad choice or morphemes?

[RonButters at AOL.COM]

In a message dated 3/4/05 11:13:46 AM, laurence.horn at YALE.EDU writes:


> As I mentioned to Ron off-line a while back, I find this term
> extremely misleading, since it strongly suggests the death OF the
> generic, as in suicide, fratricide, regicide, genocide,...  But here
> what is meant is death (or subsumption) of the trademark by
> conversion TO a generic:  the generic is goal, not theme/patient.
> Granted, "trademarkicide" isn't viable, but can't those lawyers come
> up with something better than "genericide" for what isn't the killing
> of a generic?
> 
> Larry
> 

I don't think that I got this message, but be that as it may, GENERICIDE _is_ 
the common legal term for the process, and, being a descriptive rather than a 
prescirptive linguist, I am not to eager to quarrel with them on such purist, 
prescriptivist grounds as Larry enunciates here. There is also an arcane 
linguistic term that I am not able to bring to mind right now (invented perhaps by 
someone at Merriam-Webster a few years ago an posted on their website) and 
that someone in this thread actually used a few turns ago. It has a nice ring to 
it, but it is also (as I recall) totally opaque and (for me at least) 
obviously difficult to remember.