Saturday, February 28, 2009
acme
For those of you who also watched Looney Tunes religiously when you were kids, you'll remember that the Acme Corporation provided Wile E. Coyote with the tools he used to try and catch the Road Runner. Of course, these products, whether they were anvils or dynamite, never worked out for Wile E. Coyote. I like that the Warner Bros. had a sense of irony, since "acme" is defined as "the highest point, as of achievement of development" (AHD). This word comes straight from the Greek word "akme," which goes back to the Indo-European root "ak-," meaning "sharp" (AHD). Further research shows that acme can also be defined as "the point of extreme violence of a disease, the crisis," which is an archaic definition but one that (somewhat) more aptly suits the endeavors of a certain cartoon prairie wolf (OED).
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Remember how Acme became the generic term for an incompetent company?
ReplyDeleteI remember seeing commercials where a company would attack a nondescript "Acme, Inc."
I just figured Acme didn't actually exist.
But I moved to a new highschool in the 10th grade, and outside of it was Acme Brick, Inc.
Whenever I passed it, I thought to myself,
"Aren't people afraid those bricks are going to like, blow up or something?"
Yeah. When I was doing my research, I came across some info (on Wikipedia, perhaps?) about how back in the 1980s or so, lots of businesses realized that they would be listed first in the yellow pages if they had a name that began with an A, or sometimes a B... and thus, many Acmes were born.
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