I call them "tissues." Calling all tissue Kleenex is like my mom calling all video games Nintendo.
this post was submitted on 16 Apr 2025
92 points (95.1% liked)
Showerthoughts
35682 readers
454 users here now
A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted clever little truths, hidden in daily life.
Here are some examples to inspire your own showerthoughts:
- Both “200” and “160” are 2 minutes in microwave math
- When you’re a kid, you don’t realize you’re also watching your mom and dad grow up.
- More dreams have been destroyed by alarm clocks than anything else
Rules
- All posts must be showerthoughts
- The entire showerthought must be in the title
- No politics
- If your topic is in a grey area, please phrase it to emphasize the fascinating aspects, not the dramatic aspects. You can do this by avoiding overly politicized terms such as "capitalism" and "communism". If you must make comparisons, you can say something is different without saying something is better/worse.
- A good place for politics is c/politicaldiscussion
- Posts must be original/unique
- Adhere to Lemmy's Code of Conduct and the TOS
If you made it this far, showerthoughts is accepting new mods. This community is generally tame so its not a lot of work, but having a few more mods would help reports get addressed a little sooner.
Whats it like to be a mod? Reports just show up as messages in your Lemmy inbox, and if a different mod has already addressed the report, the message goes away and you never worry about it.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
FWIW, I just learned that escalator and kerosene started as trademarked brand names.
So did Frisbee
Xerox machine
Cellophane
Dumpster
insisting on calling all tissues kleenex is how the company loses the rights to the name
My parents do say kleenices, but they're massive nerds. And linguists. Dad has bad allergies so "Did you take the kleenices out of your pockets?" was a common laundry time question. They also pluralized pizza as "pizzot".
Fun fact! Pizza is already plural. The singular is a piz, which is where we get the English word “piece”, because pizza come pre-portioned. The word “peace” also comes from the same derivation, because it is impossible to go to war while enjoying a piz of pizza.
/s
Kleenex is the name of the brand, not the tissues
Brands are nouns and can (and are) thus genericized.
According to the internet the -ex to -ices is a dead suffix for specifically latin borrowed words
is a dead suffix
sure, if you go with that attitude!
Kleenpodes!
Yes, I know its unrelated. I'm just trying to force in the whole octopi problem.
What if the singular of Kleenex was a Kleenek.
Gah you fuggin beat me to it!
Kleeni (long i)
I think that would be the plural of Kleenus.
[kliːniː]
Kleenussies
Furthermore, it should be pronounced like it was a Greek philosopher.
Κληνίσης
Kleeneges.
Tap for spoiler
rex -> reges
spoiler
regex → regeges?
Tap for spoiler
Lateges, googolpleges, apeges, indeges, Wesseges and Susseges, the two seges. Latin is super easy.
You must struggle with nouns like 'deer' and 'mail'.
I thought Kleenex was the plural. I use one Kleeni at a time.
What should the plural of Lego be?
Leggos
My eggos
Lesgo?
What other word follows this?
index -> indices matrix -> matrices codex -> codices appendix -> appendices
Ah, I forgot about index and didn't know about codices.
I'll continue to use the plural "tissues", though! Lol
It's funny to me to see someone simultaneously prescriptively linguistic enough to use a Latin pluralization but not pedantic enough to use the proper non-genericized term for tissues, haha
In my broken mind, it has been for years!