An SAT tutoring session fitted Tim Levin into the bespoke boom.

Studying vocabulary flashcards with a student, Mr. Levin came across 'bespoke,' a vaguely familiar word. 'I had heard about it previously in terms of suits and shirts, the English word,' Mr. Levin recalled of the 2005 session at his tutoring business.

He and the student looked it up. It 'meant customized in general, made to order,' he says. 'I thought, 'This is perfect.' ' And thus Tim Levin Tutoring was renamed Bespoke Education, joining what Mr. Levin quickly found was a barrage of bespoke businesses.

Bespoke, once a term narrowly used for made-to-order suits from tailors such as those on London's Savile Row, has gone into mass production.

In the New York City area, there are two dozen 'bespoke' businesses, including Bespoke Barber Shop, Bespoke Books, Bespoke Surgical and at least one shop simply called 'Bespoke.'

A company in the U.K. promises 'bespoke' cardboard boxes, delivered in two working days. 'Bespoke' salads -- ingredients of the diner's choice -- are all the rage in London. U.S. executives sprinkle conversation with talk of 'bespoke deals.'

Some language purists aren't happy with this co-opting. Neither are London's original bespoke artisans.

'We don't like it when we have all sorts of so-called bespoke items that don't go anywhere near as far as we do,' says Philip Parker of Henry Poole & Co., a 206-year-old clothing business in London that will custom sew a pair of pants and a suit jacket for about $5,000.

'As far as we're concerned, the word has gotten bastardized,' Mr. Parker says.

Newly bespoke business people say they have sympathy for Savile Row purists -- to a point. 'I admire what they do and love that there are people who really put their heart into their craft,' says Scott Summit, founder of San Francisco's Bespoke Innovations, which makes customized covers for artificial limbs. 'But the word is inevitably going to evolve.'

When Mr. Summit was working on his first product, a $4,000 limb covering called Bespoke Fairings, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office told him it considered bespoke a 'merely descriptive' adjective -- like calling a strawberry 'red' -- for which the trademark bar is very high. Mr. Summit says it took many months' work by lawyers for him to win the trademark.

Mr. Summit also had to fight other bespokers to find a Web address. Bespoke.com belongs to Bespoke Software, forcing him to settle for Bespoke Innovations. Another bespoke challenge: 'No Americans know how to pronounce it,' Mr. Summit says.

Last month, the Patent and Trademark Office rejected Rachelle Miller's request to trademark bespoke to refer to her dip brand. But the Colorado resident got a preliminary green light to trademark Bespoke Crackers. 'It's totally frustrating,' she says about the split ruling. She plans to appeal the dip decision.

In a dip denial letter, a PTO attorney wrote that there were too many examples of bespoke used to 'refer to similar types of food products, such as sauces, broths and marinades.' A PTO spokesman says that the agency can't discuss individual trademarks or applications but that it weighs requests on a case-by-case basis.

The Oxford English Dictionary traces bespoke's origins to the shoemaking trade around the mid-1800s. The tailoring industry says the term began to be used to describe the cloth customers picked out in advance for their suits. The cloth then became 'spoken for' or 'bespoken.'

In the past two centuries, London's elite menswear stores have sprouted along Savile Row, where shops brag about ties to the royal family, Winston Churchill or other English greats.

It is unclear when and how bespoke broke out of the tailoring mold. Mark-Evan Blackman, an assistant professor of design at New York's Fashion Institute of Technology, says the bespoke proliferation may be tied to young Hollywood types becoming enamored with custom suits about a decade ago.

Mr. Blackman says the bespoke boom trailed behind the proliferation of a parallel term from high-end women's clothing -- couture. 'Bespoke has slowly started seeping into our consciousness as a term for our gold standard, as a male equivalent of couture,' he says.

He isn't thrilled about how fashion terms have proliferated. 'Everything is couture now, even bedsheets,' says Mr. Blackman.

Bespoke business people say that the term is apt for their particular line.

'Like a bespoke tailor, we measure [clients'] risk tolerance, needs and outlook in order to develop a strategy that fits their unique needs,' says Justin Walters, co-founder of Bespoke Investment Group LLC. 'Let's face it, a company name with 'custom' in it would be much more boring.'

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office lists 39 active applications and registrations for 'bespoke' entities or brand names; more than half have been filed in the past 18 months.

But the term has also entered the corporate-speak lexicon, along with words like 'right sizing' and 'leveraging' -- so much so that some executives say they are sick of hearing the word tossed around in boardrooms.

'Bespoke, the word to use when you want to communicate economic superiority,' longtime Silicon Valley investor Roger McNamee says in an email. He says that when the word started to sprout a few years ago, he waged a campaign among investors, novelists and entrepreneurs 'in the hope of creating a bespoke-free zone.' He says he has given up the crusade, after failing to arrest the explosion of bespoke use.

Even users of the word look down their noses at some bespoke brethren. Stefan Paszke, one of the owners of Bespoke Cycles in San Francisco, says some companies tweak an off-the-shelf bicycle frame and unfairly call it custom. 'That's not really a bespoke bike,' he says. His shop takes dozens of measurements of a rider and completes a questionnaire about what kind of riding a customer does to create a handmade bike from $3,500 to the 'sky is the limit,' Mr. Paszke says.

Mr. Levin, the SAT tutor, says that 'bespoke' legitimately describes what he does. When prospective clients in New York City puzzled over the name, he showed the dictionary definition -- 'made to individual order; custom-made; requested' -- printed on his business card.

The trouble now, Mr. Levin says: 'Bespoke' is becoming downright ordinary. 'Fewer and fewer people are asking what it means these days,' he says.