xerox

You probably know "Xerox" as the name of a company famous for copiers, but the name became so common that people also use "xerox" as a verb meaning make a photocopy, or as a noun for the copy itself. It is one of those brand names, like Kleenex or Google, that people use for the action or the thing. If someone says, "Please xerox these pages," they usually just mean "make photocopies," no matter what machine is being used. In everyday English, the word is informal and very common in office talk.

"Xerox" began as a brand name connected with xerography, a dry electrostatic copying process developed in the 20th century. The Haloid Company built its business around this new technology and later changed its name to Xerox. When the company introduced its famous office copiers in the late 1950s, copying documents became much faster and easier for everyday business use.

Because the technology was so widely known, the name "Xerox" gradually started to be used as a general term for photocopying, even when the machine was not made by Xerox. This is similar to how people say "Google it" when they mean "search online." In this everyday sense, "xerox" can be a verb, as in "Can you xerox this form for me?", or a noun, as in "I need a xerox of this page."

Today, Xerox is still a company name, but in ordinary speech many people use "xerox" to mean "photocopy." That said, some style guides prefer "photocopy" because "Xerox" is still a trademark. In real conversation, though, the meaning is usually clear: it refers to making a paper copy of a document or to the copy itself. The word is most common in American English and in casual office language.