Well, it’s the hardest day of the challenge. X is always a tough letter, and I used up my brilliant plan of looking at the origins of the letter last year. So what did I pick?
Xerox! Yes, it’s a proper name, but there’s actually more to it than that. Xerox was trademarked in 1952, but the name came from the word xerography. That word showed up in 1948—yes, that recently. The word for photocopying paper was a mix of the word photography and the Greek word xeros, which means dry. Apparently, because Xeroxing was a form of copying without using liquid, the inventors decided to tack on the word dry to it. But in Greek because that’s fancier.
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