PDF as a Verb

[Baker, John]

        I still think of FedEx as being specific to Federal Express,
whose registered trademark it is.  Maybe that just shows I'm not up on
the current usage.  Maybe it's something that varies by area or context,
like Coke, a registered trademark for Coca-Cola that means just that in
some places, but means any caramel-flavored carbonated beverage in
others.

        Although "to PDF" is specific to Portable Document Format, there
are a number of companies, not just Adobe, whose software can produce
PDF files.

John Baker


-----Original Message-----
From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf
Of Laurence Horn
Sent: Friday, February 03, 2006 3:31 PM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Re: PDF as a Verb

One difference is that "to FedEx", which does indeed mean 'to ship by an
express/overnight service" doesn't build in the company name, so it's a
true example of incipient genericide (like "to xerox" was), while "to
PDF" still assumes the Adobe program and hence isn't a true
generic--it's more like "to google", which for most people does involve
utilizing Google itself, rather than just any old search engine--at
least for now.

Larry

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