Showing posts with label Blackberry President. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Blackberry President. Show all posts

Friday, February 13, 2009

Obama Accused of Promoting the Genericide of one Compound Word (Blackberry) while Inspiring a new Compound Word (Blackberry President)

Posted Friday, January 23, 2009 5:41 PM on Newsweek.com
Thanks to Obama, BlackBerry Becomes the Next Kleenex

The above headline is comparing Blackberry to Kleenex in the sense that Blackberry is a generic name for the product category of PDA's just like Kleenex is a generic name for the product category of tissues. This process is appropriately called genericide.

I'm not sure that I agree with the writer of the headline because I don't think that Blackberry is in the same league as Kleenex, Band-Aid, Xerox, and the like when it comes to the genericization of product names, though it could be in the near future.

At any rate, I found it interesting that this headline appeared just a week before the current Newseek magazine cover (note the top left corner).



The noun-noun compound word Blackberry President could well be on its way to becoming one of the most-used new words of the year; in fact, there is even a website called blackberrypresident.com. Furthermore, a google search of the word Blackberry President turns up too many results to list including the following cartoon.




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