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by Freak_NL 909 days ago
> Nobody's going to move (back?) to "hook-and-loop," […]

I do, depending on the audience — I'm fine with hook-and-loop. In general I try to avoid generic trademarks whenever reasonable. In English this takes more effort; in Dutch this isn't too much of an issue. No native Dutch speaker would consider calling an 'ijsdweilmachine' a 'zamboni', for example. It seems that this is very much a US English thing to do.

2 comments

"Hook-and-loop" is a crappy name for it in English because it conveys an image of someone physically performing a hooking and looping action, like the old-timey hobby, latch hooking[0]. But the action you perform is really just either pressing together or pulling apart. The fact that the mechanism is comprised of tiny hooks and loops isn't really germane to how it works on a macro level. I quite like the "fur tape" mock suggestion in the second video.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/shorts/4MDeHa_1C-w

Yeah. If someone was to say their clothes had hook-and-loop fastener, I would never think of velcro. I would think of the metal hooks and loops (or eyes) on bra straps, old jackets, dress pants, etc.
Nah, it happens in Dutch too. Aspirine for example is commonly used for the generic medicine, even though it's a brand name. (Hell, it's sometimes even used as a general term for a light over-the-counter pain killer like paracetamol.)

TomTom is also sometimes used for general navigation systems, though that has been going downhill as fast as the company.

"Googlen" is used too in the general sense. Google does have a huge market share, so it's usually correct, but people do "google on Bing".