If the omniscient tome known colloquially
as the Big Ol’ Book of Words for Nerds,
and officially as The Dictionary, is to be
believed, every word located within the well-worn
pages of this bastion of the English language
means something.
But actually, there are a bunch of words many
of us use every single day that don’t mean
a dang thing, and were either pulled out of
thin air by a random person many years ago
or willed into existence by a committee of
ad men in crisp, pristine suits purely to
sell a product.
Thanks to years — and even centuries — of
frequent use, many of these wholly made-up
words have since entered into the popular
lexicon and continue to be used in conversation
and commercials today.
Since language is an ever-evolving beast,
this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but
it sure stands as a testament to the power
of human ingenuity that most people don’t
realize the only meaning any of the following
words have is the meaning we have since ascribed
to them.
10.
Wi-Fi was made up because the real word wasn’t
catchy enough
It’s commonly asserted that the word Wi-Fi
stands for wireless fidelity, much in the
same way the word Hi-Fi stands for high fidelity.
Which makes sense, right?
However, according to one Dr. Alex Hills,
who is partially responsible for the creation
of the first Wi-Fi networks in history, that’s
simply not the case.
The word Wi-Fi was instead something wireless
engineers coined solely for marketing reasons.
Hills says the name was needed because because
the technical specification the newly created
wireless networks used (called IEEE 802.11)
didn’t exactly roll off the tongue.
To be fair to Dr Hills, he kind of has a point
and it’s hard to imagine the technology
would have caught on with such an unintuitive
and lame-ass name.
In his book, Wi-Fi and the Bad Boys of Radio,
Hills recalls that members of the emergent
wireless industry chose the word Wi-Fi mostly
because it sounded catchy, though he does
note that the natural link between Hi-Fi and
Wi-Fi probably helped cement it in the minds
of the public.
You know, even though the two words have nothing
to do with one another and are in no way linked.
9.
Haagen-Dazs was made up by a guy at his kitchen
table
According to Reuben Mattus, the original creator
of the Häagen-Dazs brand, he came up with
the now iconic name of his pillowy-soft ice
cream after spending several hours saying
nonsense words aloud until he found one he
thought sounded neat.
Purported to be a Danish word on early Häagen-Dazs
packaging — the packaging even included
a map of Denmark because lying to your customers
apparently wasn’t illegal back then — the
word has no translation in any language and
especially not in Danish.
Something anyone familiar with the Danish
language can tell at a glance, seeing as Danish
language doesn’t make use of umlauts.
Like, at all.
Mattus, a Polish Jew, would later note that
he chose a name that “sounded” Danish
to the untrained ear as a subtle tribute to
the country of Denmark, which he greatly respected
for its many WW2-era efforts to save Jews
from persecution.
That said, Mattus would also later note that
the name was chosen to make it stand out to
consumers, reasoning that a foreign-sounding
name suggested an intangible air of quality
to his ice cream that consumers would innately
pick up on when browsing store shelves.
8.
Idaho was a word someone pulled out of thin
air
According to historians, the name of the Potato
State has no meaning in any known language
and it was, as far as anyone can tell, just
a made up word suggested by an early territorial
representative for the area named B.D. Williams.
The story goes that long before Idaho was
called, well…
Idaho, someone proposed naming it Jefferson.
Republicans voted against this and Williams
instead suggested Idaho, claiming that it
was an old Indian word meaning “Gem of the
Mountains.”
Almost immediately, this was debunked by Oregon
senator Joseph Lane, who correctly asserted
“No Indian tribe in the nation has that
word … It is a corruption certainly, a counterfeit,
and ought not to be adopted.”
Amazingly, even after Williams acknowledged
that Idaho was a made up nonsense word likely
coined by his predecessor George M. Willing,
it still caught on.
So much so that the people of proto-State
began using it anyway, applying the name to
both a steamboat and a mine, among other things.
Before long the word had entered the collective
conscious to the extent that even though people
knew Idaho didn’t mean anything, they still
voted for it being the official name of the
new State.
History is fun like that sometimes.
7.
SOS doesn’t mean anything, which is kind
of the point
While many assume that SOS stands for Save
Our Souls, or Save Our Ship, or something
similar, the truth is that the abbreviation
doesn’t really stand for anything.
Which, as Reader’s Digest handily points
out, is kind of the point.
To explain, as you may or may not know, the
universal signal for distress in Morse code
is three dots, three dashes, and a further
three dots.
Officially introduced in 1905 by the German
government, this sequence of signals is difficult
to misinterpret and easy to recognize, even
to the untrained ear.
This was seen as being incredibly important
as it allowed ships in foreign waters to signal
that they were in need of help without having
to worry about a language barrier.
A pervasive problem before the idea of a universal
signal for distress was introduced that saw
many boats sink before help could arrive,
as is wont to happen when you’re effectively
screaming via a series of beeps at someone
who doesn’t understand you at all.
Now technically this signal can be expressed
in a number of ways, with IJS, SMB, and VTB
all resulting in the same string of dots and
dashes when expressed Morse Code.
However, SOS eventually won out simply because
it was so visibly distinctive and the fact
it can be read from any direction, allowing
stranded sailors to additionally type SOS
out with rocks and stuff.
6.
Zumba was made up over lunch in a single afternoon
A popular misconception about the popular
power-posing dance exercise classes known
as Zumba is that the word has its roots in
Spanish, which is partially true, but not
really.
You see, prior to being known as Zumba, the
fitness program was known as “Rumbacize,”
a portmanteau of Rumba (which means “to
party” in Spanish) and Jazzercise, a similar
exercise program popular in the ’90s (ask
your parents about it!).
Problems arose, though, when the creator of
Zumba, Alberto Perez, tried to trademark the
term and found that it’d had already been
stealthily registered by the owner of a gym
he taught Rumbacize classes at.
Undeterred, Perez and his business partners
wiled away an afternoon riffing on the word
rumba to find something that hit the ear just
right.
The word they eventually settled on, as you
can probably guess, was Zumba.
On its own website the Zumba company openly
acknowledges that zumba is “arbitrary and
fanciful word” they made up, which hasn’t
stopped people assuming that it must mean
something in at least one language.
5.
Ginsu was invented to make knives made in
Ohio seem Japanese
Ginsu is a word made famous by a bunch of
cheesy commercials from the 1980s designed
to do one thing and one thing only: sell whoever
was watching some fancy, overpriced knives.
Although the commercials played into the katana-like
sharpness of the knives and leaned heavily
into Japanese imagery, including using fonts
seemingly ripped straight out of a Japanese
B-movie about ninjas, all Ginsu Knives are
designed and manufactured by the Scott Fetzer
company in Ohio.
According to a Washington Post profile of
the man who coined the word, Arthur Schiff,
this was a deliberate decision made to convince
the public that “no matter how many knives
they already owned, [Ginsu knives] were something
special.”
As an aside, Schiff often claims to have coined
the word in his sleep and never once revealed
what, if anything, it was supposed to mean
beyond “sounding” sort-of Japanese.
The same can be said of Schiff’s partners
in the Ginsu empire, Edward Valenti and Barry
Becher — the latter of whom would reportedly
respond to the question “what does Ginsu
mean?” by smiling and stating “I never
have to work again.“
4.
Kodak was made up by a guy who loved the letter
K
Given the multitude of advancements to the
world of camera technology Kodak as a company
is responsible for, you wouldn’t be remiss
to think the word “Kodak” itself had some
deeper meaning.
For example, one popular theory is that the
word Kodak is an onomatopoeic representation
of the sound a camera shutter makes when you
take a photo, or perhaps a nod to the fact
you could use an especially large one of their
cameras to fend off an aggressive bear.
Which, while nice, is a load of bunk because
according to Kodak itself the founder of the
company George Eastman basically pulled the
name out of his butt.
Eastman is said to have coined the word while
playing anagrams with his mother and settled
on Kodak simply because he really, really
liked the letter K.
That’s not a joke, by the way; Eastman often
described the letter K as “a strong, incisive
sort of letter,” acknowledging this by making
sure his company name contained not one, but
two Ks.
Eastman also settled on the name Kodak because
he reasoned that it was simple enough to never
be mispronounced and was distinctive enough
to not be mistaken for another word.
3.
Halitosis was made up to sell you mouthwash
Halitosis is a science-y sounding word frequently
bandied around by dentists and mouthwash commercials
that is used to describe a medical condition
characterized by atrociously bad breath and
a sudden uptick in the number of people willing
to shove their tongue in your mouth.
Here’s the thing, though: there’s no such
thing as halitosis.
It was a made up medical condition coined
by the owner of Listerine in the 1920s.
The most popular version of the story behind
the word is as follows.
After failing to market Listerine as everything
from an antiseptic to a cure for gonorrhea
that you could also use to scrub your floors
(no, really), company owner Jordan Wheat Lambert
decided to change tack and market his product
as a cure for bad breath.
To convince the public that they needed Listerine,
Lambert scoured the dictionary and happened
upon an old Latin word meaning breath, halitus,
which he decided to stylize as halitosis to
make it sound like a legitimate medical condition.
The company then ran a series of ads claiming
that halitosis (which they defined as meaning
“unpleasant breath”) was a chronic problem
plaguing America for which only they had the
cure.
2.
OK was (probably) coined as a joke
According to the Smithsonian, the origins
of the word “OK” aren’t entirely clear
but a common and highly plausible theory is
that it was coined as a joke and has no definitive
meaning.
Specifically, it’s purported that a writer
for the Boston Morning Post created the word
during a satirical article about spelling
in 1879.
Said article suggested that OK was an acronym
for “Oll Korrect,” a deliberate misspelling
of All Correct, and it’s suggested that
this somehow struck a chord with the public
and entered into the popular lexicon.
Although this is by no means the only possible
origin of the word, with some theories suggesting
it may have originated in Europe or perhaps
the Middle East as even the Bedouin tribes
of the Sahara seemed to be familiar with it
at around the same time it entered popular
usage, aptly named etymologist (word nerd)
Allen Read is known to have spent years trying
to trace the origins of OK and put this particular
theory forward as one of the more plausible
explanations during his lifetime.
1.
Corinthian leather doesn’t mean anything,
was made in Jersey
Many people assume, somewhat understandably,
that the modifier “Corinthian” in the
phrase Corinthian Leather is used to describe
a hyper-exclusive kind of leather.
Perhaps manufactured by blind monks with impossibly
soft hands in a small Spanish village somewhere
in the heart of rural Europe.
As it turns out, the leather was actually
from a factory in Jersey and the phrase was
something thought up by an ad executive to
make the Chrysler Cordoba sound cool and exotic.
To doubly sell the public on this and obfuscate
the true origins of the leather, Chrysler
hired actor Ricardo Montalban to be the spokesman
for the car, presumably because the words
Corinthian Leather sounded ridiculous sweet
in his impossibly sexy Spanish accent.
For years the company and Montalban himself
refused to admit what, if anything, Corinthian
Leather was supposed to mean.
That was until the actor was asked point blank
during an interview with Letterman to spill
the beans, prompting him to sheepishly admit
that it meant nothing.
