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Deciphering The Indecipherable — The Dictionary of Branding
Welcome to the Scarcliff | Salvador Dictionary of Branding, the
most comprehensive glossary of branding and naming on the Web. Our
goal is to produce and maintain an up-to-date record of the terms
of art in use in our field, including the latest branding concepts,
naming styles and techniques, tagline types, and commercially-useful
linguistics terms.
Each entry is cross-referenced if appropriate and includes examples
from the marketplace wherever possible. Please contact us with your
suggested additions and corrections.
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Denotation (naming, verbal branding)
A word's intrinsic, literal senses, excluding its overtones and
shades of meaning. While we listed various connotations of ‘travel’
above, the denotation (from Webster's dictionary) is ‘to go
from one place to another; to make a journey or journeys’.
Compare Connotation.
Descriptor (trademark law, branding)
A word which literally describes the product or service being identified,
often functioning as a category name and generally paired with a
fanciful, arbitrary, or suggestive name to form a complete brand
name. One example of this is Kleenex facial tissue, where
Kleenex is a fanciful name and facial tissue is a descriptor. Compare
Category Name.
Diminutive (naming, verbal branding)
Any brand name created by adding a suffix denoting smallness, youthfulness,
familiarity, or affection. In English, diminutives are usually formed
with the suffixes ‘-y’, ‘-ies’, or ‘-kin’.
Huggies diapers and Wheaties breakfast cereal are
examples of diminutives.
Discourse Audibility (naming, linguistics)
The likelihood that a given brand name will stand out in the course
of normal speech. The discourse audibility of the name Yahoo!,
for example, is extremely high. Compare Textual Visibility.
Dissonance (naming, linguistics)
Any harsh or disagreeable combination of sounds, the perception
of which will vary from language to language. In English, Schlitz
beer is an example of dissonance.
Doublet (naming, linguistics)
A pair of words which share a common origin, but which have distinct
shades of meaning. The English words vibrate and vibrant are both
derived from the Latin word vibrare ‘to vibrate, to shake’,
but vibrate means ‘to shake, to quiver’ and vibrant means
‘vigorous, energetic, radiant’.
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