You know when a brand name becomes the generic name for something? It's like how "Kleenex" has come to mean "facial tissue." I'd always wondered what you call that. It turns out that it's called a Generonym.
But here's the weird thing about it. It may be called a generonym in academic circles, but I've noticed that whenever people have to describe this concept, they always resort to Kleenex, just like I did above. So "generonym" is like "facial tissue" in that it's a technical name that normal people ignore in favour of a brand name. For instance, if I had to describe how "Google" has become the generic word for searching on the internet, I could say that Google has been "Kleenexed." So Kleenex has not only been "Kleenexed" as the word for facial tissue, it has been Kleenexed as the word for a brand name in general use.
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