By any other name

Somehow, Amazon must have heard that my wallet is about 20 years old, and starting to show some signs of wear.  It's certainly not from being packed full of fifty-dollar bills that is ragging the leather, but, rather, all those BOGO pizza coupons, BJs receipts, and gift cards for hamburger restaurants that closed during the (first) Bush administration.

But at least this ad above caught my eye, until I saw the price of $7.19. No wallet that sells for so little could be any good at all, even one made of PU Leather.

Wow! Real PU leather! I thought of what that acronym might mean. Pop up? No. Plutonium, from the chart of the elements? No sir. Purdue University? Nuh uh. Same with Panamanian Union, Power Up, Pick Up, Product Update and Pressure Ulcer.

It turns out, "PU leather" means fake leather made of PolyUrethane.

Which means it's not leather.

I think this all started with "faux fur."  Long ago, it became uncool to parade around wearing animal skins, because leopards and bears and alligators did not live their lives just to make clothing for us. So the textile industry, always on the lookout for ways to make our lives better, came up with realistic fake furs, but the tony, well-dressed and chic among us demur when it comes to using the word "fake."  Only the unschooled would label something fake, so the GQ and Vogue readers called it "faux" fur, from the French word for "false."

Foes of the word "faux" have yet to mount any opposition to its deceptive use. You see this all the time on those home shopping channels as they sell "faux" pearls and "faux" diamonds to real people watching at home on real old TVs.

A real entry for a real word in a real dictionary

Other firms have come up with new terms for their trumpery. Burger King is selling a fake hamburger made of potatoes and other forms of plant life, but they call it the "impossible" burger. We can allow BK a little latitude in this matter, on the grounds that real hamburgers contain no ham.

There was a brand of wigs for women that used the slogan "It's not fake anything; it's real Dynel!"

And if you're going to start a modern version of a 50s doo-wop group, have them wear pleather jackets, and wigs, and call themselves "The Dynels"!