Vacuum Cleaner? English Language problem!

I know of a vacuum cleaner company called Dust Devil, that's pretty accurate considering the thing is about as loud as a devil and would presumably be devil-like to dust.
I've also seen those vacuum seal bags that you use a vacuum cleaner to suck the air out of before putting something like clothes into storage. In that case maybe it could be argued that you are creating a vacuum, if by vacuum you just mean the absence of air.
Honestly it was probably just some salesman who was using sciency terms in order to make his cleaning gadget of the future more marketable.
As far as for the frustrations of the english language that we often ignore I like this song:

We don't need to go to quantum physics and other such things. Most vacuums are not hard vacuums and still contain appreciable particle counts, yet are called that as being regions or lower pressure than either relative or atmosphere. No different to a car tank being full if someone took a teaspoon of fuel out.

Of course if you want to get fun with this then see "hoover" which is/was a brand name but in the UK at least is synonymous with such things, used as a verb.

A lot of things in English will also use a similar construction -- electric oven, gas oven, motor car, though fun twists like push bike (among motorbike types then bike will mean that with motor, pushbike then being pedal bike or something more old school still) also exist.

N10A said:

I know of a vacuum cleaner company called Dust Devil, that's pretty accurate considering the thing is about as loud as a devil and would presumably be devil-like to dust.

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Wasn't this "Dirt Devil"?
About the loudness: One time some rules from European Union actually make sense. Since a few years the maximal power of normal vacuum cleaners is limited. Before that, those machines sold best that had the highest amount of power/watts printed on the package. Seeing/hearing those grossly inefficient machines, I always got the impression that 95% of the energy got instantly converted to heat and noise. The newer models are far more quiet and cooler (yes, compressing air will always result in heat -- before I get another lecture) and still work as intended (create enough suction).

N10A said:

I've also seen those vacuum seal bags that you use a vacuum cleaner to suck the air out of before putting something like clothes into storage. In that case maybe it could be argued that you are creating a vacuum, if by vacuum you just mean the absence of air.

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I use such bags. They are quite handy to save space when having compressable things full of air.
Still far away from high vacuum.

FAST6191 said:

We don't need to go to quantum physics and other such things. Most vacuums are not hard vacuums and still contain appreciable particle counts, yet are called that as being regions or lower pressure than either relative or atmosphere. No different to a car tank being full if someone took a teaspoon of fuel out.

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That's what I get for keeping a blog entry a little shorter for once (and putting it in the nonsense blog). Even intergalactic space is not a "perfect" vacuum.
Lowering the pressure inside a chamber to create suction for cleaning is so far from anything remotely near to high vacuum.

FAST6191 said:

Of course if you want to get fun with this then see "hoover" which is/was a brand name but in the UK at least is synonymous with such things, used as a verb.

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I left this one out intentionally.
Our English teacher mentioned this. When she told us about the brand "Hoover" and the usage, the first thing I said to myself was: "You will instantly forget the brand name! You will not remember this!" From there on it was burned into my brain. I hate it when brand names reach the status of a synonym for a product category.

KleinesSinchen said:

I hate it when brand names reach the status of a synonym for a product category.

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This. This bothers me to such an unhealthy degree. I always feel such a need to point out that "No, it's not a 'Kleenex' it's a 'tissue'. Kleenex is just a company that produces tissues." But generally I hold back. First-world problems. Woo.

Choice links if we are onto genericide.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-27026704
https://www.rd.com/list/surprising-trademarked-words/
https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/28238/25-words-you-might-not-know-are-trademarked

Some are a bit US centric (most of those would not be known or at least not used in the UK and Australia is different again).

As far as pedantry about hard/strong/high vacuum then I am still back at it uses the effects of such a thing, however that is boring so cool video related to the subject at hand

Should be clean by vaccum. But you know the English folks really love shrink things and mixup them