Oxfam it… Charity names as verbs
Howard Lake | 7 October 2010 | Blogs
I’ve just found a book that I borrowed ages ago from a friend. She didn’t want it back – “Oxfam it” she suggested. Of course, I understood exactly what she meant: “take it to the nearest Oxfam shop and donate it”.
But that made me think: which other charity names have become verbs? There can’t be many who have made it into such a pantheon.
In the commercial world there are more brand names that have come to represent a more generic action, from “to hoover” through “to xerox” to today’s “to google”, although the latter isn’t as generic as the former two. You wouldn’t be “googling” if you were searching on Yahoo! or Bing.
So, are there any other charity names that can rank alongside Oxfam as a generic verb?
About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.