The word teflon is a trademark name owned by DuPont and protected by the United States government.
Only its owner legally can use it. Yet sometimes, a trademark name becomes very successful, so successful that people use it to form new expressions that have nothing to do with a product.
That happened with teflon. Former Democratic Congresswoman Patricia Schroeder tells how it happened in her book Twenty-four Years of Housework and the Place is Still a Mess.
She said that Democrats had a special problem with Republican President Ronald Reagan during the 1984 presidential election campaign.
None of their criticisms or accusations of wrongdoing seemed to affect public support for Mr.Reagan.
Neither unpopular policies nor mistakes seemed to make him less popular.
Democrats wanted some short expressions to describe this effect.
