"David CL Francis" wrote in message
...
On Wed, 5 Jan 2005 at 09:59:54 in message
, Bob Gardner
wrote:

It bugs me, too. Most ramps are concrete, not tar-macadam, but the newsies
think that saying tarmac makes them sound knowledgeable.

I would have thought it was English 'oldies' like me who might say it in
all innocence. My dictionary is a bit old (1982) but says:

Tarmac. Trade name (often not cap.) a paving material that consists of
crushed stone rolled and bound with a mixture of tar and bitumen. esp. as
used for a road, airport runway, etc. Full Name Tarmacadam.

The Tarmac group is a construction company in the UK.


Tarmac is used in the UK as a generic term for any form of asphalt surface
as in a tarmac drive, or a tarmac pavement (sidewalk in your language). Most
or our roads are made of asphalt and in the old days the major company doing
road building was called Tarmac. They had a proprietary brand of road
surfacing material also called Tarmac.

The way it has developed is similar to the way hoover has become synonymous
for vacuum cleaner. Again in the UK, people refer to any vacuum cleaner as a
hoover not just those made by Hoover.

There are many other examples where a trade name or proprietary product has
become to be used generically. The most recent being Viagra which is
attributed to all products of the same formulation, not just the product
from Pfizer.


By the way the company called Tarmac changed its name to Carilion about 10
years ago in a shift away from its association with the black top trade
although it is principally still a civil engineering group

Chris