Verbing Weirds Google

MoNickels writes "Back in January, the American Dialect Society voted the neologism "to google" as the most useful word of 2002. Now bring on the lawyers! Google's have sent a cease-and-desist letter to Paul McFedries, creator of the famous Word Spy site, demanding he remove google as a verb from his lexicon, or else. Frank Abate, an American editor for the Oxford English Dictionary, points out, however, that you can't claim proprietary rights to a verb." Update: 02/26 03:19 GMT by T : MoNickels writes with an update: "Frank Abate is not an editor of the OED, but he is a former editor of the New Oxford American Dictionary, both published by Oxford University Press." Thanks for the amendment!

Comments

I just have to know...

[PetoskeyGuy]

Off Topic but...

Timothy,

Is posting to Slashdot your full time job?? ;o)

Re:ok, so he removes it from his lexicon so what?

[fishbowl]

"Kleenexes"

Well, if you believe Latin is truly dead and not merely resting, you're correct. OTOH, if you believe that Latin is still evolving...

Kleenex looks like it should either be a feminine
third declension noun, like "codex" becomes "codices"

kleenex, kleenicis, kleenici

or masculine, like rex

kleenex, kleenegis, kleenegi

And before anyone jumps down my throat about it, the plural of thermos is thermoi. (Greek, not Latin).