Googlewhacking

Michelle honestly didn't want me to post this - but having written it, and having nothing else worthwhile to say, I'm posting it anyway. I apologize in advance.

For those of you not familiar with the concept, a Googlewhack is defined as a web search for two words (using Google) which results in only one hit. The amazing thing is that a googlewhack is actually notoriously difficult to find. There are rules, of course – the search must contain words that are in the dictionary, and they cannot be in quotes. Further, if the single hit turns out to be simply a list of words, the googlewhack is void. Some tips: first, think of one word, preferably a nice obscure one that you haven’t heard since elementary school, like, say, putrescence. Then, think of another word that, for best results, should be either an oxymoron, or totally unrelated, like, say, rhomboid. (rhomboid putrescence = 684 hits). So, here are 30 attempts at googlewhacking, and the results (number of hits). My best is 4, excluding my “word list” googlewhack.

1. serendipitous snorkelling – 34,600. Perhaps this isn’t too surprising, as people may very well consider the discovery of snorkelling itself to be serendipitous.
2. alexandrite xylophone – 604. Okay, a little better than the above, but really, what an odd juxtaposition.
3. juxtaposed marmalade – 10,300. Playing off the above comments. Who would have thought marmalade could be so mixed up?
4. paraffin linguistics – 11,800. Lots of well-educated wax users, apparently.
5. flabbergasting putridity – 289. I suppose this is a good thing. I would probably be worried if there were more flabbergasting putridity around.
6. flabbergasting superciliousness – 200. The word so nice, I had to use it twice. It’s good to know that apparently flabbergasting superciliousness is not found too frequently, or at least not discussed.
7. glib anemone – 900. Alrighty, then. A few more than I expected, but apparently lots of sea animal lovers are tired of glib remarks about their anemones…or something.
8. contortionist potatoes – 105,000. I’m not really surprised by this as potatoes is quite a common word. However, I am surprised that there are so many that are into contortionism.
9. portentous fruitcake – 1,440. Returning to the realm of respectability, at least in terms of the number of hits. I guess fruitcake could be considered portentous.
10. fruitcake portentousness – 422. A small refinement on the above, but apparently a small number of the population truly find fruitcake portentous. I usually only find it so when asked to eat it.
11. ominous salubriousness – 630. When you’re a true health freak, I suppose it could be ominous.
12. salubrious putridity – 493. What? Who would have put these two together? It appears that most of the writings were about removing the putridity to make it more salubrious.
13. ribald obfuscation – 542. Hmm. Just reading the little blurbs under the hits makes me worry about people out there. The second entry reads: “Cheese is not grandiose, and not afraid to be maudlin – there is no obfuscation with cheese.”
14. tumultuous opacity – 6,520. I had no idea that opacity could be so moving.
15. synchronized obliqueness – 1,410. Not even one of the better ones. More people synchronize their obliqueness than might be originally thought.
16. unsubstantiated sonorousness – 202. Obviously, the low level of hits means that most sonorousness is substantiated.
17. abstruse conflagration – 13,600. Whoa!!! Fires are apparently very difficult to understand. I never expected this many hits.
18. cacophonous bulimia – 4. Brilliant! Getting much closer now.
19. cacophonous polysorbate – 1. Technically, this is a word list, but I’ll count it anyway.
20. encephalopod xylophone – 0. (Until now. Once I post this, Google can find it, and if somebody thinks of encephalopod xylophones, then they can have a googlewhack.)
21. algorithmically ululating – 858. Hmm. Big step backwards. Going to go back and play around with cacophonous some more.
22. cacophonous algorithms – 2,670. Maybe not. I had always thought that algorithms were relatively silent anyway.
23. depilatory quadrophenia – 10. Good grief. I’m really reaching now, and yet still haven’t reached the elusive googlewhack.
24. eponymous disestablishmentarianism – 51. Which goes to show that just because you know a lot of long words doesn’t mean that you’ll get a googlewhack.
25. monosyllabically moustachioed – 282. Trying a bit of alliteration now. I’m guessing that a monosyllabic mustache would be small?
26. sibilant querulousness – 591. Actually, this should be a bit higher, I would think. Sometimes querulousness can be very sibilant.
27. feloniously bifurcated – 741.
28. semantically squeegee – 702. Yeah. That’s odd.
29. sycophantically monosyllabic – 336.
30. dog slobber – 455,000. I give up.