ac·cen·ture /əkˈsɛn.tʃər/ coinage. “Accent on the future,” entered in a staff competition by a consultant in Oslo. Andersen Consulting had just lost the right to its own name and needed another by New Year's Day.
a·cer /ˈeɪ.sər/ borrowing. Latin for sharp, or able. Multitech had to stop using its own name abroad, and the word that replaced it had the side benefit of sorting near the front of every trade-show list.
a·di·das /ˈæd.ɪ.dæs/ blend. Adi Dassler, shortened by the man himself. Not “All Day I Dream About Sports” — that arrived decades later, from nobody in particular.
a·do·be /əˈdoʊ.bi/ toponym. The creek that ran behind a founder's house in Los Altos. A name you could walk to.
air·bnb /ˈɛər.biː.ɛnˈbiː/ clipping. AirBed & Breakfast, filed down twice. Three air mattresses and one sold-out design conference.
al·di /ˈæl.di/ blend. Albrecht Diskont. Two brothers who ran the shop, and one word for what they did in it.
al·pha·bet /ˈæl.fə.bɛt/ pun. The founding letter gives two readings: the collection of letters that carries language, and alpha-bet — a return above the benchmark. Both were meant.
am·a·zon /ˈæm.ə.zɒn/ borrowing. The largest river on earth, chosen to imply the largest store — and to sort near the top of an alphabetical list.
an·droid /ˈæn.drɔɪd/ eponym. Colleagues called Andy Rubin “Android” for his taste in robots. He gave the nickname to his company, and Google bought both.
a·pa·che /əˈpæ.tʃi/ contested. Named in respect for the Apache nations, the foundation says. The “a patchy server” pun is in the project's own documentation, and both stories have been told ever since.
ap·ple /ˈæp.əl/ arbitrary. Jobs was back from an orchard and wanted something friendly. It also filed ahead of Atari in the phone book.
ar·by's /ˈɑːr.biz/ acronym. R. B., for the Raffel brothers. Everybody hears roast beef instead, and the company has never once corrected them.
ar·du·i·no /ɑːrˈdwiː.noʊ/ toponym. The bar in Ivrea where the founders drank, named for a king who ruled Italy for four years.
a·sa·na /ˈɑː.sə.nə/ borrowing. Sanskrit for a held posture: a body doing work by staying still.
as·pi·rin /ˈæs.pə.rɪn/ coinage. Acetyl, plus Spiraea — the meadowsweet the acid came out of — plus the -in every drug ended in. Three parts, one word, no story.
at·las·si·an /ətˈlæs.i.ən/ mythic. Atlas, holding up the sky. Two Australians holding up everybody else's software went looking for a Titan and found the one whose whole job is load-bearing.
au·di /ˈaʊ.di/ translation. The founder's surname, Horch, is German for “listen.” His partner's son, mid-Latin-lesson, translated it.
a·von /ˈeɪ.vɒn/ toponym. A book salesman who gave away perfume until he noticed which half sold, working out of a town in New York that reminded him of Stratford-upon-Avon.
bar·bie /ˈbɑːr.bi/ eponym. Ruth Handler's daughter Barbara, who spent her childhood giving paper dolls grown-up lives. Her brother Ken got the other one.
bing /bɪŋ/ coinage. Picked for the sound of arriving at the answer: one syllable, a hard stop at each end, and a verb waiting to happen.
black·ber·ry /ˈblæk.bɛr.i/ metaphor. The keys looked like the drupelets of a berry. Strawberry was tried first and rejected: “straw” sounds slow.
blue·tooth /ˈbluː.tuːθ/ eponym. Harald Bluetooth, the tenth-century king who joined Denmark to Norway. It was only ever the codename; nobody replaced it, and the logo is his initials in runes.
bud·weis·er /ˈbʌd.waɪ.zər/ toponym. Beer from Budweis, in Bohemia, where it had been brewed under that name for centuries. A St. Louis brewery took the adjective in 1876 and the two have been in court ever since.
can·on /ˈkæn.ən/ respelling. Kwanon, the Buddhist goddess of mercy, softened for export.
can·va /ˈkæn.və/ clipping. Canvas, with the last letter taken off.
ca·si·o /ˈkæ.si.oʊ/ eponym. Kashio Tadao, respelled until an English speaker could say it on the first try.
cat·er·pil·lar /ˈkæt.ər.pɪl.ər/ metaphor. A photographer watching the new track-laying tractor said the thing crawled like a caterpillar. The company took the word off him.
chi·pot·le /tʃɪˈpoʊt.leɪ/ borrowing. Nahuatl chilpoctli: smoked chili. The word came through Spanish with the smoke still in it.
cis·co /ˈsɪs.koʊ/ clipping. San Francisco, minus the city. The logo is the bridge, in case you missed it.
clo·rox /ˈklɔːr.ɒks/ blend. Chlorine and sodium hydroxide, which is the whole bottle. The name is the formula with the chemistry filed off.
co·ca-co·la /ˌkoʊ.kəˈkoʊ.lə/ compound. Coca leaf and kola nut, with the K respelled to a C so the two halves would alliterate. The bookkeeper who chose it also drew the script it is still written in.
com·paq /ˈkɒm.pæk/ blend. Compatibility and quality, compressed — with “paq” for a small, solid thing you could carry, which the first machine, at twenty-eight pounds, only just was.
cray·o·la /ˈkreɪ.oʊ.lə/ portmanteau. French craie, chalk, plus oleaginous — oily. Coined by the founder's wife, a schoolteacher, who knew what the box was for.
dat·sun /ˈdæt.sʌn/ respelling. DAT for the three investors' initials, then DAT-son for the small car that came after. Son reads as loss in Japanese, so the boy was changed into the sun.
de·bi·an /ˈdɛb.i.ən/ blend. Debra and Ian Murdock, in that order — one of the few names in this dictionary that puts the other person first.
dell /dɛl/ eponym. Michael Dell, who had been trading as PC's Limited and discovered what an apostrophe costs you at the border.
drop·box /ˈdrɒp.bɒks/ compound. The name was settled long before the domain was. It shipped on getdropbox.com until the real one could be bought, and the missing word cost six figures.
dun·kin' /ˈdʌŋ.kɪn/ clipping. It was Open Kettle until somebody watched the customers dunk the doughnuts in their coffee. The doughnuts came off the sign in 2019; the verb stayed.
du·o·lin·go /ˌduː.oʊˈlɪŋ.ɡoʊ/ portmanteau. Two, and language. The owl was hired afterward and has been more famous than the name ever since.
du·ra·cell /ˈdʊər.ə.sɛl/ portmanteau. Durable cell. The claim is in the name, which is the only place a claim is free.
e·bay /ˈiː.beɪ/ clipping. Echo Bay, the founder's consultancy. EchoBay.com belonged to a gold-mining company, so the name lost its first word.
ep·son /ˈɛp.sən/ blend. Son of EP — the EP-101, the little printer that grew out of the timing gear Seiko built for the Tokyo Olympics. The company is named after a product, not a founder.
es·ca·la·tor /ˈɛs.kə.leɪ.tər/ genericide. Otis owned this word until a ruling said everybody did. A name can be too good at its job.
et·sy /ˈɛt.si/ coinage. A nonsense word, chosen because it meant nothing and could come to mean whatever its sellers made of it.
e·vi·an /ˈɛv.i.ɒn/ toponym. Évian-les-Bains, on the French shore of Lake Geneva. The spring is the product and the town is the evidence.
ex·xon /ˈɛk.sɒn/ coinage. A computer generated the candidates and the lawyers killed them. The double X occurs in no living language, which was the specification: Enco, the name it replaced, meant “stalled car” in Japanese.
face·book /ˈfeɪs.bʊk/ borrowing. The printed book of student photographs an American college handed out in September, so that freshmen could learn each other's faces.
fan·ta /ˈfæn.tə/ clipping. German Fantasie — what the wartime bottlers had instead of cola syrup, and instead of a name.
fed·ex /ˈfɛd.ɛks/ clipping. Federal Express — “Federal” for the Reserve contract the founder hoped to win and never did. Customers clipped it themselves, and twenty-odd years later the company agreed with them.
fig·ma /ˈfɪɡ.mə/ clipping. From “figure.” Short, soft, and two letters from the thing it does.
fire·fox /ˈfaɪər.fɒks/ borrowing. Another name for the red panda. The browser was Phoenix until a BIOS company objected, then Firebird until a database did.
gap /ɡæp/ clipping. The generation gap, which in 1969 was the side of the argument a jeans shop wanted to be standing on.
gar·min /ˈɡɑːr.mɪn/ blend. Gary Burrell and Min Kao, in that order.
ga·tor·ade /ˈɡeɪ.tər.eɪd/ eponym. Aid for the Florida Gators, who were the trial. The name is the clinical result.
git /ɡɪt/ eponym. Torvalds again: “I'm an egotistical bastard, so I name all my projects after myself.” British, for an unpleasant person.
goo·gle /ˈɡuː.ɡəl/ misspelling. A googol is ten to the hundredth. The word was written down wrong and the spelling stuck.
go·pro /ˈɡoʊ.proʊ/ compound. Surfers wanted the footage the professionals were getting. The camera is named after what it was supposed to do to you.
group·on /ˈɡruː.pɒn/ portmanteau. Group plus coupon. Nothing hidden, nothing clever, and it worked.
häa·gen-dazs /ˈhɑː.ɡən ˈdɑːs/ coinage. Invented in the Bronx to sound Danish. Danish has no ä, and neither half of it means anything at all.
has·bro /ˈhæz.broʊ/ blend. Hassenfeld Brothers, who sold textile remnants and then pencil boxes for a quarter of a century before they sold a toy.
hew·lett-pack·ard /ˌhjuː.lɪtˈpæk.ərd/ eponym. A coin toss in a Palo Alto garage decided whose name went first. Hewlett won it.
hon·da /ˈhɒn.də/ eponym. Soichiro Honda. The surname means “main rice field,” which describes a farm and nothing that has ever had an engine in it.
hoo·ver /ˈhuː.vər/ eponym. William Hoover bought the patent from the department-store janitor who built the machine. In Britain the name became a verb, which is the kind of marketing triumph a legal department spends the next century arguing with.
hot·mail /ˈhɒt.meɪl/ pun. They worked down a list of every name ending in mail and stopped at the one with HTML inside it. It was written HoTMaiL for years so that you could not miss it.
hu·lu /ˈhuː.luː/ borrowing. Mandarin for a gourd — the vessel that holds precious things in the proverb.
hy·un·dai /ˈhʌn.deɪ/ borrowing. Korean for modernity — a construction firm in 1947 naming itself after the era it intended to build.
ibm /ˌaɪ.biːˈɛm/ description. International Business Machines. A name that describes what you sell is a name you eventually outgrow.
i·ke·a /aɪˈkiː.ə/ acronym. Ingvar Kamprad, Elmtaryd, Agunnaryd: a boy, his farm, and his village.
in·sta·gram /ˈɪn.stə.ɡræm/ portmanteau. Instant camera plus telegram. Two dead technologies, one live product.
in·tel /ˈɪn.tɛl/ clipping. Integrated Electronics. The rights had to be bought from a hotel chain called Intelco first.
in·tu·it /ɪnˈtuː.ɪt/ borrowing. The verb, taken off an agency's list because the software's whole promise was that it would know what you meant.
i·pod /ˈaɪ.pɒd/ metaphor. A freelance copywriter saw the white brick and thought of 2001: “Open the pod bay doors, HAL.” The i was already Apple's.
jag·u·ar /ˈdʒæɡ.ju.ɑːr/ borrowing. The company was SS Cars until 1945, by which point those initials were available to nobody. The cat had been a model name; it became the marque.
ja·va /ˈdʒɑː.və/ metaphor. Coffee. The language was called Oak until a lawyer found another Oak already using the word.
jeep /dʒiːp/ contested. Either “GP” for general purpose, said fast, or Eugene the Jeep out of Popeye, who could go anywhere. Soldiers were reading it both ways by 1941.
kev·lar /ˈkɛv.lɑːr/ coinage. DuPont's naming committee working the way it worked for nylon: a word with no parts, built to sound like the material had already been tested.
ki·a /ˈkiː.ə/ compound. Two characters: to rise, and Asia. A maker of bicycle parts announcing where it intended to get to.
kick·start·er /ˈkɪkˌstɑːr.tər/ compound. To kick-start is to bring an engine to life with one shove of your foot. Nothing further was required.
kin·dle /ˈkɪn.dəl/ metaphor. Michael Cronan was asked for a word about starting a fire — small and slow rather than a blaze. He had named TiVo too.
kin·ko's /ˈkɪŋ.koʊz/ eponym. The founder's college nickname, given for his hair.
klar·na /ˈklɑːr.nə/ borrowing. Swedish klarna, “to clear up” — which is what a payment does when it finally goes through.
klee·nex /ˈkliː.nɛks/ coinage. Clean, plus the -ex that Kotex had already taught the market to read as modern.
ko·dak /ˈkoʊ.dæk/ coinage. Meaningless in every language, deliberately. Eastman wanted the hard K at both ends and built the word outward from it.
l'o·ré·al /ˌlɔːr.eɪˈæl/ respelling. Auréale, the hair dye a young chemist mixed in his kitchen, itself from auréole — a halo. The product named the company, and the apostrophe made it French.
le·go /ˈlɛɡ.oʊ/ compound. Danish leg godt, “play well.” That it also means “I assemble” in Latin was luck, not planning.
lex·us /ˈlɛk.səs/ contested. The agency says it was built out of luxury and left deliberately empty. “Luxury export to the US” turned up afterward, the way a backronym does. The first candidate, Alexis, sounded too much like somebody on television.
linked·in /ˌlɪŋktˈɪn/ compound. Linked, and in. Two small words that between them say connection and membership, which is the entire product.
li·nux /ˈlɪn.əks/ eponym. Torvalds wanted to call it Freax and thought naming it after himself was too vain to ship. The administrator of the FTP server renamed the directory without asking.
lo·gi·tech /ˈlɒdʒ.i.tɛk/ portmanteau. French logiciel, software, plus technology — a Swiss company hedging across two of its own languages.
lu·lu·le·mon /ˌluː.luːˈlɛm.ən/ coinage. Three L's, picked on the founder's theory that a name hard for Japanese speakers to say would read as authentically North American. He said this out loud, in print.
lyft /lɪft/ respelling. Lift, misspelled. The misspelling is the part you can own.
mat·tel /məˈtɛl/ blend. Harold “Matt” Matson and Elliot Handler. Elliot's wife, who was not in the name, invented Barbie.
mer·ce·des /mɜːrˈseɪ.diːz/ eponym. A dealer raced under his daughter's name, then ordered thirty-six cars on condition that they carry it. She was ten years old.
me·ta /ˈmɛt.ə/ borrowing. Greek for beyond. It is also the Hebrew word for dead, which the internet established within a day of the announcement.
mi·cro·soft /ˈmaɪ.kroʊ.sɒft/ portmanteau. Microcomputer plus software, and hyphenated for the first two years while everyone got used to it.
mit·su·bi·shi /ˌmɪt.suˈbiː.ʃi/ compound. Three water chestnuts — the founder's family crest, read ever since as three diamonds. The logo is the etymology.
mo·der·na /moʊˈdɜːr.nə/ portmanteau. Modified RNA, compressed — and “modern” arrives free, which is exactly the kind of luck a portmanteau is built to catch.
mon·go·db /ˈmɒŋ.ɡoʊ.diːˈbiː/ clipping. Humongous, with both ends taken off and a database bolted on. The scale is the joke and the joke is the pitch.
mo·to·ro·la /ˌmoʊ.təˈroʊ.lə/ blend. A motor, plus the -ola that Victrola had already taught America to hear as sound. The first product was a radio for your car.
mo·zil·la /moʊˈzɪl.ə/ portmanteau. Mosaic plus Godzilla, coined in a staff meeting to mean “Mosaic killer.” The lizard was drawn to fit the joke.
na·bis·co /nəˈbɪs.koʊ/ acronym. National Biscuit Company, compressed until it stopped sounding like a description.
nes·tlé /ˈnɛs.leɪ/ eponym. Henri Nestle's surname is Swabian for “little nest.” The mark is a bird feeding its young, which is the name drawn rather than the product.
net·flix /ˈnɛt.flɪks/ portmanteau. Net plus flicks, at a moment when the net was a modem and the flicks arrived by post.
nike /ˈnaɪ.ki/ mythic. The Greek goddess of victory. Two syllables, and half the world still says them wrong.
ni·kon /ˈnaɪ.kɒn/ acronym. Nippon Kōgaku — Japan Optical — with the middle taken out.
nin·ten·do /nɪnˈtɛn.doʊ/ contested. Usually rendered “leave luck to heaven.” The company has never confirmed it, which is its own kind of answer.
ni·ve·a /nɪˈveɪ.ə/ borrowing. Latin niveus, snow-white — the first cream that could hold water and oil together without turning.
no·ki·a /ˈnoʊ.ki.ə/ toponym. A river, then a town on the river, then a mill in the town.
nu·tel·la /nuˈtɛl.ə/ blend. The English nut with an Italian ending on it, out of a Piedmont pastry shop stretching scarce cocoa with hazelnuts.
nvid·i·a /ənˈvɪd.i.ə/ borrowing. Latin invidia, envy — what the competition was supposed to feel.
ny·lon /ˈnaɪ.lɒn/ coinage. It is not New York and London. DuPont's committee coined it out of nothing, having first considered Duparooh — “DuPont pulls a rabbit out of a hat.”
or·a·cle /ˈɔːr.ə.kəl/ borrowing. The codename of the CIA project the founders had just finished. They kept it.
o·re·o /ˈɔːr.i.oʊ/ contested. Nabisco has never said. Greek oreo for hill, French or for gold, or simply the two O's of the biscuit with a re between them. Take your pick.
o·val·tine /ˈoʊ.vəl.tiːn/ clipping. Ovomaltine — egg and malt, which was the recipe. A registration clerk in Britain shortened it, and the shortened one is the one that sold.
pan·a·son·ic /ˌpæn.əˈsɒn.ɪk/ portmanteau. Pan and sonic: sound, everywhere. It was the export name on a line of loudspeakers for twenty years before it was allowed to be the company.
pat·a·go·ni·a /ˌpæt.əˈɡoʊ.ni.ə/ toponym. Somewhere most customers could not find on a map, and pronounceable in every language they sold into.
pay·pal /ˈpeɪ.pæl/ compound. A pal you pay, which is what money between strangers has to feel like. The merged company's other founder wanted to call the whole thing X, and eventually got his letter.
pel·o·ton /ˈpɛl.ə.tɒn/ borrowing. French for the pack in a road race — a little ball of riders, from the same root as platoon. A word about company, sold to people riding alone.
pep·si /ˈpɛp.si/ borrowing. Dyspepsia. It was first sold as a cure for it.
pin·ter·est /ˈpɪn.tər.ɛst/ portmanteau. Pin plus interest, joined on the T they happened to share.
pix·ar /ˈpɪk.sɑːr/ coinage. Pretend-Spanish, built out of “pixel” on the theory that it looked like a verb.
post-it /ˈpoʊst.ɪt/ description. A glue that failed at being glue. It shipped first as Press 'n Peel and sold nothing; the name that worked was the instruction.
pu·ma /ˈpjuː.mə/ borrowing. Rudolf Dassler's half of the family firm, registered first as Ruda and renamed within a year. His brother Adi kept the other half, and the other name.
py·thon /ˈpaɪ.θɒn/ borrowing. Monty Python's Flying Circus, not the snake. Every illustrator since has drawn the snake.
q-tips /ˈkjuː.tɪps/ blend. The Q is for quality, asserted rather than demonstrated. They were sold as Baby Gays for the first three years.
qan·tas /ˈkwɒn.təs/ acronym. Queensland and Northern Territory Aerial Services. The only Q in the business without a U after it, because it is not a word.
quak·er /ˈkweɪ.kər/ arbitrary. No Quaker has ever had anything to do with the oats. The mark was registered in 1877 for the qualities the public already attached to the word, and Friends have been objecting ever since.
qual·comm /ˈkwɒl.kɒm/ blend. Quality Communications, halved and joined — a company founded in a San Diego den and named after its own claim.
ray-ban /ˈreɪ.bæn/ compound. To ban the ray. An optical firm was asked for a lens that would stop army pilots getting headaches at altitude, and the name is the specification.
red bull /ˈrɛd bʊl/ translation. Krating Daeng, a Thai tonic sold to shift workers, carried straight across. The animal on the can is a gaur — a wild ox, and not a bull at all.
red hat /ˈrɛd hæt/ metonym. Marc Ewing wore his grandfather's red lacrosse cap around the university computer lab. The manual told people that if they got stuck, look for the guy in the red hat.
red·dit /ˈrɛd.ɪt/ pun. “Read it.” Also Latin reddit, “it renders” — found afterward, kept anyway.
ree·bok /ˈriː.bɒk/ borrowing. Rhebok, an African antelope, out of a dictionary a founder had won as a boy.
ro·ku /ˈroʊ.kuː/ borrowing. Japanese for six. It was the founder's sixth company.
ro·lex /ˈroʊ.lɛks/ coinage. Wilsdorf wanted five letters that would fit on a dial and be sayable in every language he sold into. He said the word came to him on a horse-drawn omnibus.
ru·by /ˈruː.bi/ borrowing. Two gemstones were on the table, coral and ruby. Ruby won: a colleague's birthstone, and the month after pearl's.
sam·son·ite /ˈsæm.sən.aɪt/ mythic. Samson, plus the -ite that makes a mineral. A trunk maker claiming the strongest man in scripture and the hardest thing in the ground at the same time.
sam·sung /ˈsæm.sʌŋ/ compound. Korean for “three stars”: big, numerous, and meant to last.
san·ka /ˈsæŋ.kə/ clipping. French sans caféine, cut in half. What is missing from the coffee is what is missing from the word.
se·ga /ˈseɪ.ɡə/ acronym. Service Games, from a company that put slot machines on army bases.
se·pho·ra /ˈsɛf.ər.ə/ blend. Greek sephos, beauty, welded to Séphora — Moses' wife, who the tradition insists was beautiful.
sharp /ʃɑːrp/ clipping. The Ever-Sharp, a mechanical pencil patented in 1915. The company still carries the name of a thing it stopped making a century ago.
sha·zam /ʃəˈzæm/ borrowing. The magic word out of a comic book, said when you want the thing to simply appear.
shop·i·fy /ˈʃɒp.ɪ.faɪ/ blend. Shop, plus the -ify that turned a decade of software into verbs.
skype /skaɪp/ clipping. Sky peer-to-peer, shortened to Skyper. Skyper.com was taken, so the R came off.
slack /slæk/ backronym. Searchable Log of All Conversation and Knowledge — decided some time after the name was.
so·nos /ˈsoʊ.noʊs/ palindrome. Sonic, folded so that it reads the same from either end.
so·ny /ˈsoʊ.ni/ blend. Latin sonus, sound, plus “sonny” — American slang for a bright young man.
spam /spæm/ contested. Spiced ham, or shoulder of pork and ham, or nothing at all. Hormel ran a competition, paid the winner a hundred dollars, and has never said which reading it bought.
spanx /spæŋks/ respelling. Blakely noticed that Kodak and Coca-Cola both turn on a hard K, then traded the -ks for an -x — because a real word cannot be owned and a misspelled one can.
splunk /splʌŋk/ coinage. From spelunking. The joke was crawling through caves of machine data with a lamp.
spo·ti·fy /ˈspɒt.ɪ.faɪ/ mishearing. Ek misheard Lorentzon shouting across a room. The meaning was reverse-engineered later.
star·bucks /ˈstɑːr.bʌks/ eponym. The first mate of the Pequod. Pequod was the first choice, until someone said it aloud.
stripe /straɪp/ arbitrary. The product shipped as /dev/payments first. What replaced it means nothing in particular, which is the entire specification for a word you intend to own.
su·ba·ru /ˈsuː.bə.ruː/ borrowing. Japanese for the Pleiades. Six stars in the badge, for the six companies that merged.
swatch /swɒtʃ/ contested. Swiss watch, compressed — and “second watch” at the same time. The consultant who coined it meant both, and the second reading is the one that describes the product.
tar·get /ˈtɑːr.ɡɪt/ metaphor. A department store opening a cheaper shop, and a public-relations man arguing that the new one should aim the way a marksman does. The bullseye arrived with the sentence.
tes·la /ˈtɛs.lə/ eponym. Nikola Tesla, whose induction motor the first car ran on.
tik·tok /ˈtɪk.tɒk/ onomatopoeia. The sound a clock makes, chosen for a product whose entire proposition is that you lose track of one.
to·shi·ba /təˈʃiː.bə/ blend. Tokyo Shibaura Denki, which nobody ever said. The nickname went official in 1978, forty years after the merger that made the mouthful.
to·yo·ta /tɔɪˈoʊ.tə/ respelling. Toyoda, with one sound changed: eight brush strokes in katakana instead of ten, and eight is the lucky number.
tup·per·ware /ˈtʌp.ər.wɛər/ eponym. Earl Tupper, plus the -ware that had meant housewares since there was earthen and silver. The parties came later and sold the lot.
twitch /twɪtʃ/ metaphor. Justin.tv's gaming channel, spun out and renamed for the reflex the games are really testing.
twit·ter /ˈtwɪt.ər/ onomatopoeia. “A short burst of inconsequential information; chirps from birds.” The dictionary entry came before the bird.
ty·le·nol /ˈtaɪ.lə.nɒl/ blend. N-acetyl-para-aminophenol, mined for syllables. The chemistry is all there; you simply cannot hear it.
u·ber /ˈuː.bər/ borrowing. German über, “above.” The umlaut did not survive the border.
u·bun·tu /ʊˈbʊn.tuː/ borrowing. Nguni for humanity toward others: I am because we are. A South African paid for the distribution and gave it the word.
u·ni·lev·er /ˌjuː.nɪˈliː.vər/ blend. Margarine Unie and Lever Brothers, merged in 1929 and named by pushing the two halves together until they held.
u·ni·qlo /ˈjuː.nɪ.kloʊ/ misspelling. Unique Clothing Warehouse, clipped to Uni-Clo. A clerk registering the Hong Kong company typed a Q for the C, and the founder liked it enough to repaint every shopfront.
vas·e·line /ˈvæs.ə.liːn/ coinage. German Wasser and Greek elaion — water and oil — with the -ine every nineteenth-century chemical wore. The stuff itself was scraped off oil rigs.
vel·cro /ˈvɛl.kroʊ/ portmanteau. French velours and crochet: velvet hook. Two words, one fastener.
ven·mo /ˈvɛn.moʊ/ portmanteau. Latin vendo, “I sell,” with mobile stuck on the end.
ver·i·zon /vəˈraɪ.zən/ portmanteau. Veritas and horizon. Truth, at a distance.
ves·pa /ˈvɛs.pə/ borrowing. Italian for wasp. Piaggio heard the engine and said so out loud, and that was the meeting.
vi·ag·ra /vaɪˈæɡ.rə/ portmanteau. Vigour and Niagara. A branding firm's word, and the least subtle thing in this dictionary.
vim·e·o /ˈvɪm.i.oʊ/ anagram. Video plus me, which is also an anagram of “movie.” Both were on purpose.
vir·gin /ˈvɜːr.dʒɪn/ arbitrary. Somebody in the room pointed out that they were all completely new at business. Branson was twenty, and has kept the word for fifty years.
vi·sa /ˈviː.zə/ borrowing. Chosen because it is said the same way in every language on earth, and because it already meant “you may pass.”
volks·wa·gen /ˈfoʊlks.vɑː.ɡən/ description. The people's car — a state programme's description of what it wanted, left on the product long after the state that wanted it was gone.
vol·vo /ˈvɒl.voʊ/ borrowing. Latin for “I roll.” Registered for ball bearings years before there were any cars.
wal·mart /ˈwɔːl.mɑːrt/ eponym. Sam Walton's own name, chosen partly because seven letters cost less to put on a sign than anything longer did.
wd-40 /ˌdʌb.əl.juːˈdiː ˈfɔːr.ti/ description. Water displacement, fortieth attempt. The lab notebook is the name, and the thirty-nine failures are still in it.
wen·dy's /ˈwɛn.diz/ eponym. Melinda Lou Thomas, whose brothers and sisters could not manage Melinda and called her Wenda. Her father put the easier version on the sign.
whats·app /ˈwɒts.æp/ pun. “What's up,” with the app inside it. The joke is the whole name and it survives translation into nothing at all, which two billion people have not minded.
wi-fi /ˈwaɪ.faɪ/ arbitrary. It never stood for “wireless fidelity.” A branding firm coined it to rhyme with hi-fi; the backronym was bolted on afterward.
wi·i /wiː/ coinage. Two i's standing side by side: two players. Meaningless in every language, which was the brief.
wik·i·pe·di·a /ˌwɪk.ɪˈpiː.di.ə/ portmanteau. Hawaiian wiki, “quick,” plus encyclopedia.
x·box /ˈɛks.bɒks/ clipping. DirectX Box. Marketing hated it, tested it against everything they preferred, and lost.
xe·rox /ˈzɪər.ɒks/ borrowing. Greek xēros, “dry.” It was the first copying process that needed no wet ink.
xi·ao·mi /ˈʃaʊ.miː/ borrowing. Mandarin for millet, out of a Buddhist saying about a grain being as large as a mountain. The founder has also said it stands for “mobile internet,” which is two etymologies for one company.
ya·hoo /ˈjɑː.huː/ backronym. Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle. Swift used the word for a brute.
ya·kult /ˈjæ.kʊlt/ borrowing. Jahurto — Esperanto for yoghurt. A Japanese scientist reached for the language of universal understanding and got a small bottle out of it.
yelp /jɛlp/ portmanteau. Yellow pages plus help, which is a fair description of the thing it replaced.
yo·plait /joʊˈpleɪ/ blend. Yola and Coplait, two French dairy cooperatives that merged in 1965 and each kept a syllable.
you·tube /ˈjuː.tuːb/ compound. You, plus the tube — which is what a television was called back when one had a tube in it.
zap·pos /ˈzæp.oʊs/ borrowing. Spanish zapatos, shoes, with a letter taken out so an English speaker could spell it.
za·ra /ˈzɑː.rə/ respelling. Zorba was already a bar two streets away, so the letters on the shopfront moulds were rearranged into something free.
zil·low /ˈzɪl.oʊ/ portmanteau. Zillions of data points, and the pillows you sleep on. Both halves are the pitch.
zip·po /ˈzɪp.oʊ/ respelling. Blaisdell liked the sound of “zipper,” a word the world had only just been given, and changed one letter so that he could keep it.
zoom /zuːm/ onomatopoeia. Taken from a children's picture book the founder was reading to his kids. One syllable, all motion, and a verb the language already had.