Do you store files on a flash drive, a thumb drive, a USB stick — or perhaps on a monkey? What do you call the little device that holds flash memory and goes into the USB drive of a computer? Some come in wild forms, like sushi or animals. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Flash Memory Device”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hello, this is Catherine Penavaria calling from Barron County, Kentucky.
How can we help today, Catherine?
Well, I’m calling to see if you can give me any help with understanding the various names for a tiny little computer that you can attach to your keychain. I call it a flash drive, but I have three acquaintances who call it different things. One calls it a thumb drive, another calls it a jump drive, and the third one calls it a stick. And I don’t know what to call it and why there are so many names.
Oh, very good. This is a great question. Yeah. And this is a merging of my tech geekery and my language geekery all in one place. Oh, my gosh. Catherine, this is wonderful. They’re going to have a baby. How long do you have?
The short version is this. It’s complicated because there have been so many different players in this market. Some of them have had brand names that almost became generic, like thumb drive. And some of them have been names that didn’t ever have a chance, but that’s the one product you know, so that’s the name that you use. You use, Catherine, the most common one, flash drive. And the flash refers to the kind of memory that’s in these. These are the things, they’re about the size of a matchbox, maybe a little longer, and they plug into a USB port, right? And you put data on them, and it allows you to replace floppies, basically. It allows you to carry data a variety of places. So flash drive is the most common.
The second most common is USB stick because that’s where you plug it into the universal serial bus on your computer. And there’s, of course, jump drive, thumb drive, memory stick, fob, USB fob, F-O-B. Like, you know, you have a key fob because sometimes these are designed to just screw right onto your keychain, right?
Mm—
Well, now, I call mine my monkey.
What?
Because it’s shaped like a monkey. You know, you can get these cute little things. That’s my little monkey that I take with me everywhere. So there’s more names than I actually even knew, and there could be more coming in the future.
Yeah. When I worked in IT, and this was from the early 90s to, oh, heck, for a long time, 15 years or so, I worked in IT, and these things just came online. We had this exact problem in all the different IT departments where I worked, where somebody would call up and say, I want a thumb drive. And we’re like, oh, you mean a USB drive? We’re like, no, I don’t need the whole big thing. I need the small thing. Because you have this kind of confusion as well, where USB drive can either mean the little thing that’s like about the size of a matchbox, or it can mean like the big hard drive in the enclosure with the power cord and the long cables and stuff. So I’m okay to keep calling it a flash drive.
Well, you’re all okay. It’s just going to be a lot of, there’s always going to be this re-explanation every time somebody uses a term that you’re not quite sure what they mean. Each of these times I heard these, I didn’t know what the person meant, and there was a couple of seconds of misunderstanding. Thumb drive, though, is one that I love. I just like the color because it’s about the size of your thumb, right? Why don’t they make some that look like thumbs?
They do?
They do. These are a novelty product that you can buy by the thousands from companies in China that will put your brand in. They make them shaped like sushi, like animals. They make them look like knives. And like thumbs. Yeah, they make them look like Lego characters and characters out of fantasy fiction. And monkeys. Yeah, all different sorts of things. Anything that’s plastic that you can shove a USB stick into, that’s what they’ve done.
My follow-up on that is, are these regional in any way? Do people in certain parts of the country tend to use one or the other?
I don’t think so. Within my experience and what I know about this, they’re sprinkled throughout the United States. But flash drive, just to kind of reiterate here, flash drive is more common by a factor of like 100 or 200. It is the winning term. And in the last seven years or so, it’s actually pushed the other terms out of the market. It will probably be the winning term in another 10 years if we’re still using these devices at all.
All right. Well, I’m going to be part of the move to push the other terms out now. I’m sticking with FlashDrives.
Well, see, I always like the underdog, so I’m still rooting for Thumb Drive. Thanks for your call, Catherine.
Okay. Thank you very much. Take care now.
Take care.
Bye-bye.
Maybe you could have a little underdog, you know, the cartoon character, underdog, Thumb Drive.
Yeah, sure. Why not? I like Thumb Drive, too. I do. It’s these everyday difficulties that we have where we really find this common thread that we all have, which is like, I didn’t understand this person. I need some help figuring this out, right?
Yeah, yeah. If you need some help figuring out a little language question, doesn’t have to be the best one ever, 877-929-9673. Or send it to us an email to words@waywordradio.org.
