Freemium

Free at the base, paid for the serious. The shape itself runs back to the shareware of the 1980s — try it, and pay if you like it. The name arrived in 2006, when the venture capitalist Fred Wilson asked his blog's readers to suggest one. The winning entry came from Jarid Lukin, an employee at a company where Wilson sat on the board. A word that became global standard vocabulary was the winning entry in a reader competition — and the winner was in-house. The history of names has a small twist here too.