nobody — would put it now, such as acumen, anchovy and precedence. I have to say ‘perhaps’, because the old pronunciations could still be in the consciousness of some senior citizens, much as some continue to say ‘forrid’ for forehead.
Over half the words in a Pronouncing Dictionary will display alternative forms, though in many cases the differences are slight. Here are some of the more noticeable ones. Do you say the first letters of either with the sound of the vowel in see or in sigh? Do you say example with the a as in cat or as in calm? Envelope with the e of hen or the o of on? Greasy with the s of see or the z of zoo? Is it a hotel or an ’otel — or even an hotel? Does tortoise rhyme with bus or voice? Some stories depend on these variations, such as the one about the child who heard a priest ask the congregation to say ‘the prayer that Jesus taught us’ and wondered why Jesus had a pet. People who say tortoice don’t seem to find it funny.
77. Escalator — word into name into word (20th century)
Imagine you invent something and you want to give it a name — say a device which automatically repairs non-functioning keys on computer keyboards. You think up a word which you think suits the product — Keefiks, shall we say, based on key + fix — check it hasn’t been used by anyone else, protect it by registering a trademark and go into business. It takes off. You sell millions. And before you know it, the name has become part of the language. People talk about keefiksing their machines. The word becomes a metaphor. People start saying such things as I’m keefiksing my apartment and I need a spiritual keefiks.
You’re quite pleased. And then along comes another firm with a keyboard-fixing technology that is different from yours, and people call it the latest keefiks, with a small k. You object. Keefiks should have a capital K, you insist. They’ll have to call their product something else. You need to protect your brand. But it’s too late. Other firms have already joined in. Shops start advertising all keefiks models now in stock. People ask for a keefiks for their birthday, regardless of make. A Hollywood movie about alien keyboard manipulators is called Keefiks Attacks. You appoint lawyers and go to court, arguing that others should not be using your word in this way. And you lose.
Dozens of real words have been through this scenario. One of the first was escalator. Various designs for moving staircase were invented in the 19th century, but the rights to the name escalator were purchased by the Otis Elevator Company. It was a word coined from scala (Latin, ‘a ladder’) with a prefix and suffix on analogy with elevator. It’s first recorded in 1900, and within a few years it was being used figuratively. People talked of escalator clauses in contracts, referring to a planned increase in prices. Ambitious politicians were said to be on a political escalator. The verb to escalate appears in the 1920s, and escalation soon after. Otis tried hard to retain their control over the name, but in 1950 a court case concluded that the word had developed a general (or generic) meaning among the public, referring to any kind of ‘moving stairway’ and not just Otis’s original design. Otis lost.
Several trademarks have become generic, over the years, such as aspirin, butterscotch, heroin, thermos, yo-yo and zipper. Fedex, lego, meccano, kleenex, portakabin, rollerblade and hoover have also become lower-case in some of their uses. A few companies have fought a battle to retain the rights over their name. Xerox Corporation, for example, has generally succeeded in persuading people to say photocopy instead of xerox. But most realise that they can’t do much about controlling everyday usage. It’s one of the penalties of success.
Internet names are the latest to attract generic use. The popularity of the Slashdot web site has generated a verb: to be slashdotted is to be overwhelmed with messages. Google has generated to google, meaning ‘to search for information on the internet’, regardless of which search engine is being used. Google has tried to prevent this extension in meaning, so far with some success. Several dictionaries now define the verb with reference to its originator, such as (in the Oxford English Dictionary) ‘to use the Google search engine to find information on the Internet’. But whether this recognition has a long-term future, in the face of the steamroller of usage, remains to be seen.
78. Robot — a global journey (20th century)
In 1921, Karel Capek’s play R.U.R.: Rossum’s Universal Robots had its premiere in Prague, and was translated into English for a New York production the following year. He needed a name for the factory-produced humanoid workers of the story, and was thinking of coining something based on the Latin word for ‘work’, labor. But his brother Josef suggested an old Czech word for ‘forced labour’, robota. And robot was born.
16. A 1920 poster for Karel Capek’s play, Rossum’s Universal Robots. Details in the poster show (top left) the mechanism controlling arms, hands and head movements, (top right) the robot rising from its seat and bowing, (bottom right) the gear controlling standing, bowing and sitting actions, and (bottom left) a unit of the electrical mechanism for moving hands, arms and head. If the Capeks had known English, they might have opted for one of the words with relevant senses that were already in the language. Automaton had been available since the 17th century and android since the 18th. But the succinct punchy sound of robot seemed to capture the public imagination, because within five years it was being used not only for intelligent artificial beings but for any machine capable of carrying out a complex set of movements. An American newspaper in 1927 talked about different kinds of electrical robots that could answer the telephone, open doors and switch on lights.
Traffic robots arrived in 1929 — automated traffic lights. The earliest recorded usage is Canadian, but when I discussed the origins of robot in a BBC programme in 2010, several octogenarians from the north of England wrote to me to say they had clear memories of hearing the word used by their parents in this sense around that time. The London Evening Standard in August 1931 has the headline Traffic ‘Robots’ in the City. The northerners all pronounced it ‘rowbow’. Nobody uses robot in that way in Britain any more, nor in the USA, Australia or New Zealand. But in South Africa the usage has stayed. People say such things as Turn left at the robot and The robot’s broken.
The notion of a robot as an ‘intelligent artificial being’ continued to catch the public imagination. In real life, people talked about robot teachers, trains, petrol stations, planes and bombs. And in science fiction, the word took on new life, with writers such as Isaac Asimov writing acclaimed novels in which robots played a central role.
It was the science fiction writers who first shortened robot to bot, but none of them could have anticipated the explosion of usages which arrived in the
