Rebecca Greenfield, “Why ‘To Tweet’ Is Lowercase But ‘To Google’ Is Not” (The Atlantic Wire, June 14, 2013)
“The simple answer is that ‘tweet’ isn’t a trademark, or at least it didn’t start as one,” linguist Ben Zimmer told The Atlantic Wire. A word like Google, because it doubles as both the proper noun and verb — Google the company and Google “to search” — has always had an official trademark. And in that case, the verb version keeps the style of its proper noun brand-name.
Unlike made-up nouns Google or Xerox, Twitter takes its name from a real verb. “Twitter is a ‘suggestive name,’ as it is based on an actual word, twitter, imitative of a bird chirping,” Zimmer explained to the Wire. “And because of that suggestiveness, early adopter were encouraged to think of ‘tweet’ as a kindred term, since it too is an onomatopoetic term for a bird’s chirping.” Both tweet and Twitter as verbs remained acceptable for awhile. And while Twitter got the trademark from the get-go, tweet developed organically and only gained official US Patent and Trademark Office stamp of approval in 2011 — long after its colloquial usage began.
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