Discussion Groups / ESL Teaching / February 2005

OK, this might get kind of confusing.

"Branded" merchandise is a hip new term that is big is business circles
at the moment. The term "branded jeans" is not something that you would
use outside of an advertising firm or some related branch of
employment. Currently, the term "branded merchandise" is gaining
greater currency in the world at large, possibly because branding
(which simply means creating, marketing and supporting a brand image
over time), is one of the more interesting phenomenon currently being
heavily investigated at our finest business schools.

"Branded," in this usage, is what's called in liguisto-speak a
back-formation. That is to say that this usage came about from a
confusing and semi-literate shift in meaning from the original meaning.
"Branding" is what you do to cows and calves to mark them as
yours...you put a hot iron forged in a certain form to their skin and
burn a symbol into them. Livestock marked in this way is "branded." The
same kind of iron is readily applied to wood or leather, forming an
indelible mark. That's pretty much how the term came to mean anything
that bears a maker's mark of originality on it as a guarantee of
quality.

That's how we get from cows and barrels of whiskey to slick ad
executives marketing tomorrow's hippest beveraqe. Strangely enough, as
anyone who has read Dumas's _The Three Musketeers_ knows, felons were
occasionally branded in various Europeans countries. Those were the
days...and the aforementioned slick ad executives might take note of
it.

Once upon a time and long ago, "designer" jeans were ones designed by a
specific designer rather than a large, faceless corporation. If you
bought Ralph Lauren or Tommy Hilfiger jeans, you knew the great man
himself designed them on his little drawing board and then sent his
lackeys off with the plans. Nowadays, when you say "designer jeans", it
means any pricey jeans that a corporations smaller than Lee, Wrangler
or Levi-Strauss has put out, and I've heard the term extended to any
specialty jeans that the big three put out, something like
special-edition Levi's with tie-up flies or Lee bellbottoms with
spangles.

In about ten years, if the guys who sell us stuff have their way, we
may well be buying overpriced work trousers that we proudly call
"branded jeans." Until then, it would be wise to stay away from the
term.