Squirting toothpaste onto a toothbrush is so second nature that it’s unlikely you’ve put much thought into the words behind it, but we’re here to tell you that there’s a word for almost everything. That little wavy blob of toothpaste is officially called a “nurdle.” While the word seems like it could come from either a nursery-school rhyme or a sci-fi saga, it’s no joke. In fact, it was once at the center of a courtroom dispute between toothpaste manufacturers — high drama indeed.
The origins of “nurdle” didn’t begin in the dentist’s office. In the 1960s, “nurdling” was a spoof pub game invented by absurdist British comedian Michael Bentine, and in the sport of cricket, “nurdle” applies when someone scores a run by gently nudging the ball to a vacant area of the field. A more modern definition for “nurdle” is that of a small pellet of plastic used to manufacture larger plastic products. This definition is probably most closely related to toothpaste usage, as it refers to a small portion of something.
But as we transition to dental care, it gets a bit murky. “Nurdle” is a nonsense term without a clear etymological origin. It’s been proposed as a spelling variant of “nodule,” which is a “small rounded lump.” This can give us a loose connection to “nurdle” as a small lump of toothpaste, but it’s still just conjecture.
Perhaps the earliest known printed instance of “nurdle” as toothpaste was in a 1968 advertisement for the now-defunct brand Vote. The ad included the tagline, “A nurdle a day keeps the dragon away” (with “dragon” implying “bad breath”). Decades later, in the 1990s, the American Dental Association adopted “nurdle” in its literature to explain the proper amount of toothpaste to put on a brush. The ADA likely brought “nurdle” to the forefront of the dental industry; however, we know the organization didn’t coin the word, as it appeared in ads decades earlier.
But the word might never have been brought to public attention if it weren’t for a courtroom battle between two major toothpaste manufacturers: Colgate-Palmolive Co. and GlaxoSmithKline PLC (which produces Aquafresh). They were fighting not over the word “nurdle,” but over the right to use an image of the wavy blob with tricolored toothpaste and either the words “Triple Action” (Colgate) or “Triple Protection” (Glaxo). Advertisements are worth big bucks, and the companies reached a confidential settlement over the nurdle imagery in 2011.
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