Pila means cock (as in dick) in Portuguese and this whole post and website are hilarious. Dick energy. I'm holding off tears. Definitely wouldn't recommend plugging in your pila into any outlet.
That could actually be a bigger problem for the company, since it means that any competitor can label their competing product the merely descriptive term "Pila", and the company won't be able to register the trademark in the US, according to the Trademark Manual of Examining Procedure §1209.03(g): https://www.bitlaw.com/source/tmep/1209_03_g.html
> The foreign equivalent of a merely descriptive English word is no more registrable than the English word itself. "[A] word taken from a well-known foreign modern language, which is, itself, descriptive of a product, will be so considered when it is attempted to be registered as a trade-mark in the United States for the same product."
Worse yet, it might happen that the USPTO does mistakenly approve the trademark, but then revokes it when it's challenged.
Because Spanish is the second most spoken language in every US state, I'm pretty sure that in any city in the US there is a store where you can walk in today, ask for a "pila", and walk out with a battery. At least here in Argentina that's the term we normally use for single-cell batteries like a AA, while a car battery is a "batería".
> I'm pretty sure that in any city in the US there is a store where you can walk in today, ask for a "pila", and walk out with a battery.
Being 2nd most common language does not mean this, by a long shot. It definitely won’t work in most of the Seattle, Portland, Denver, Salt lake, Minneapolis, stores for example.
I think you misread the pull quote. There is definitely a store in Salt Lake (er, “greater Salt Lake area”) that primarily serves the Spanish-speaking population. There’s actually a chain called Rancho Markets.
(If you go to the deli section and say “costillas marinadas” to the right person, you will be given a bag of deliciously marinated short ribs.)
And Italian. It’s actually named after Alessandro Volta’s (the guy who named the Volt) name for the "Pila di Volta" - his stack of soaked rags that stored electricity, or what we'd nowadays call a battery stack. Pila is a Pile that stores electricity or a Battery - Pila :)
