Trademarks

How about kleenex

How about xerox?

google?

Donald Trump tried this with "You're fired".

Jello hasn't been accepted as generic?

rollerblade

how about post it?

The term "aspirin" lost its trademark status over time and is now the generic term for this pain reliever compound. It is no longer a protected trademark.

Everyone:

Thanks for all your comments -- I've been adding additional words as people suggest them. It's true, some of these words have lost their trademark status, but the goal of the list was to show all of the words (many that you would never guess) that started life as trademarks.

Thanks again!

more possibilities:

Reddimix, or readimix, commonly used around here to mean concrete purchased as the name suggests with ingredients already batched & ready to pour, and generally thought of as a builder's commodity of the ilk of "glass" or "lumber", originally from a specific supplier using that trademark, but no longer so.

Co-op or coop - originally an abbreviation of the term "Co-operative", itself a shortening for convenience of the full name "Cooperative Society of (Wherever it might be)"...that signifies a grocery or other kind of store owned, & operated to some degree at least, by its members who for the most part will also be its customers. The term has been registered in numerous geographical localities as a trademark in order to protect owners rights over its use to identify commodities sold by them; but it has also fallen into wide everyday usage to mean a store generally of its sort.

Coke - often used to order a soda, intermixed for Coke or Pepsi product. Coke is tm and a generic language form used by seekers of carbonated soda beverage drinkers :)