Is GENERICIDE a bad choice or morphemes?

[Mullins, Bill]

>
> All I'm saying is that a word containing partially productive
> morphology coined with the intention that it is to be used in
> a sense totally at odds with that morphology suggests is
> misleading at best and doomed at worst.

 . . . .
>
> I began using the term "antonomasia" for the process after I
> noticed a paper Roger Shuy presented on the topic (using that
> term) at the LSA or a satellite conference.  Looking it up on
> the internet, I see that it does indeed have that meaning
> (although perhaps a broader range of applications as well),
> and has the advantage of opaque enough to not appear to
> signify the opposite of what it is designed to signify.
>

Forgive a rank amateur for weighing in so, but:

Even after hearing the arguments against "genericide" and for
"antonomasia", it's hard for me to consider the former "doomed",
especially when compared with the latter.  When I heard the word
"genericide" in this context (and I had never heard it before, ever), it
had a sense of "rightness" in application that "antonomasia" doesn't
come close to getting.  The fact that "genericide" sticks in the memory
much better than "antonomasia" (see, for example, Ron Butters'
difficulty in recalling it) makes it a more useful term, while the
opaqueness of "antonomasia" is a strike against it.

And it is being used, to fulfill the need for a word with the meaning
that "genericide" has under this discussion.  The Hein Online legal
database has 71 cites for "genericide", and only 5 for "antonomasia" --
and all of the "antonomasia" cites are in its context as a figure of
classical rhetoric, none in the Kleenex/Xerox/Fridgidaire sense.

English is full of quirks.  We may be watching one develop, with
"genericide".