I saw a recent Reddit post where someone had played FEDEX on a board and another user mistakenly assumed that the word wasn’t acceptable, because, well it’s a reasonable assumption to make: most often a trademarked company name is not included in the OSPD.
Certain words, however, have become so ubiquitous that they supersede (ugh I thought I knew how to spell that and I don’t!) the usual rules. Think ‘googled’ as a verb.
FEDEX is another example, where the word can be a verb (FEDEXED, FEDEXING). This also brought to mind KLEENEX because of the similar EX ending, and in this case it earned its way into the OSPD simply because so many people used the word to mean ‘facial tissue’. The power of good branding, I suppose!
I’d love to hear any other examples you have – drop some in the comments if you’d like.
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