Re: Phoneme winnowing continues

Mark J. Reed wrote at 2003-06-09 12:36:30 (-0400)
 > On Mon, Jun 09, 2003 at 11:05:37AM -0500, Nik Taylor wrote:
 > > Strange.  You Aussies seem to be more prone to making trademarks
 > > common nouns than we Americans.  :-)
 >
 > Well, since when I'm sick I tend to lie around on the "sofa" with a
 > big box of "kleenex" and a bottle of "aspirin", I wouldn't jump to
 > that conclusion.  The Aussies do seem to have been doing more of it
 > more recently, though.  :)
 >

Since when is "sofa" a trademark?  New Oxford says it's early 17th
century, from Arabic _suffa_ via the French. AHD basically agrees:
http://www.bartleby.com/61/54/S0535400.html

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