Is GENERICIDE a bad choice or morphemes?

[Jonathan Lighter]

It's not just aesthetically bad - it's transparently stupid.  Lawyers are usually more scrupulous -about language, anyway. The obvious pun on "genocide" is also idiotic.

It may be a hybrid, but what's wrong with "brandicide" ?

JL



"Joanne M. Despres" <jdespres at MERRIAM-WEBSTER.COM> wrote:
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Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: "Joanne M. Despres"
Subject: Re: Is GENERICIDE a bad choice or morphemes?
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Though my descriptivist training restrains me from quibbling,
personally I've always felt exactly as Larry does -- that "genericide"
is a patently self-contradictory coinage by people whose real
interest obviously isn't in language. Even descriptivists have their
private likes and dislikes, I guess.

At least we don't have to listen to lawyers lecture at us while
partaking of their wine and cheese. (Ugh! That Trademark Assn.-
sponsored reception used to be my least favorite part of DSNA
meetings.)

Joanne Despres
Merriam-Webster


On 4 Mar 2005, at 13:24, RonButters at AOL.COM wrote:

> 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.


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