Chrysti the Wordsmith > Radio Scripts

Hundreds of words in our English lexicon are eponymous, meaning they're directly derived from names. Some familiar examples of this type of word formation are Ferris wheel, from George Ferris, an engineer from Illinois; and Gallup poll, named after George H. Gallup, an Iowa advertising executive.

Earl Silas Tupper, the name of a chemist and entrepreneur from New England, is the eponym of Tupperware, America's iconic household storage container.

Earl Tupper was born in New Hampshire in 1907. As a boy he sold produce from the family farm and dabbled in landscaping before landing a job at Dupont Chemical in 1937, where he later began experimenting with synthetic polymers. In 1942, he developed a durable and pliant product dubbed polyethylene.

Tupper achieved his first commercial success with polyethylene tumblers, manufacturing them in a rainbow of colors. Next he developed a set of bowls with airtight seals, which he included in his line of newly-christenend "Tupperware" products. Tupper sold his containers at home parties, where "Tupperware hostesses" brought the plastic products directly to the living rooms of American homemakers.

Earl Tupper sold his business to the Rexall Drug Company in 1958 for nine million dollars. Though the entrepreneur died in 1983, his name survives in Tupperware, one of the hundreds of eponymously derived words in American English.

Radio Script > Tupperware