Americans Want - But Can't Spell - Nose Bidet

Nose Bidet

Americans might not be able to spell it, but they are making sure it's in their medicine cabinets this winter. "It" is the nose bidet (no not beday, bedae, or baday) and is more commonly known as the neti pot. In fact, the New York Times recently listed the term nose bidet as one of the buzzwords of 2007.

The word "bidet" has been around since the late 17th or early 18th century, when French furniture maker Mark-Antoine Jacoud invented the plumbing fixture. But when the word "bidet" is coupled with "nose," it gets people's attention.

So, what is it? The nose bidet or neti pot is used to gently cleanse the nasal cavity and ease the suffering from allergy symptoms, sinus infections or any other sinus malady. This process, known as nasal washing, is gaining popularity. Though it has been around for centuries it has recently been rediscovered by modern science as an effective way to treat a wide range of sinus problems.

The most popular neti pot available on the market is SinuCleanse, which was created by Dr. Diane Heatley, an ear, nose and throat doctor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

During a segment on the Oprah Winfrey Show, the talk show host referred to a neti pot as a nose bidet. The SinuCleanse marketing team took to the Internet and snatched up nose bidet as keywords, along with several misspellings of the phrase.

Recently, the Oprah segment re-ran.

"We were thrilled when we received a report from Google that our ads had been shown more than 88,000 times that week," said Dave Gallo, president of Med-Systems, the company that manufactures SinuCleanse. "In fact, the neti pot was the most popular search term with 44,000 impressions."

But, not one single person spelled nose bidet correctly.

The following misspellings received the highest number of impressions:

1. nose beday

2. nose baday

3. nose biday

4. nose bedae

5. nose bidae

SinuCleanse bought the AdWords in April. Gallo says, "With more than 30,000 search attempts for 'nose bidet' since then, we're still waiting for someone to spell it correctly."