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From Australian and British English; ultimate origin uncertain googly (A deceptive cricket delivery).
Word Ancestry
Before Google became the verb that conquered homework, offices, and arguments, a “googly” was a cricket ball that behaved like a tiny traitor. The term is recorded in Australian English by 1896 and became associated with the English bowler Bernard Bosanquet, whose deliveries seemed to bounce in the wrong direction. Nobody knows for certain where googly came from: proposed relatives include goggle and goo-goo, while one theory connects it with “googie,” an old word for an egg. Then, in 1997, Larry Page and Sergey Brin registered google.com, deliberately echoing googol—the number 1 followed by 100 zeros—to suggest an ocean of information. The spelling also invited a playful verbal form, google, with the repetitive -le ending: not merely to look, but to keep looking through an apparently bottomless pile of pages. Tomorrow’s memory hook is simple: a googly fools a batsman by sending a ball somewhere unexpected; Google fools ignorance the same way by sending an answer back from somewhere unexpected.
The Story
Before Google became the verb that conquered homework, offices, and arguments, a “googly” was a cricket ball that behaved like a tiny traitor. The term is recorded in Australian English by 1896 and became associated with the English bowler Bernard Bosanquet, whose deliveries seemed to bounce in the wrong direction. Nobody knows for certain where googly came from: proposed relatives include goggle and goo-goo, while one theory connects it with “googie,” an old word for an egg. Then, in 1997, Larry Page and Sergey Brin registered google.com, deliberately echoing googol—the number 1 followed by 100 zeros—to suggest an ocean of information. The spelling also invited a playful verbal form, google, with the repetitive -le ending: not merely to look, but to keep looking through an apparently bottomless pile of pages. Tomorrow’s memory hook is simple: a googly fools a batsman by sending a ball somewhere unexpected; Google fools ignorance the same way by sending an answer back from somewhere unexpected.
Modern Usage
A company portrayed humorously as seeking world domination
Notable References
- Urban Dictionary entries describe Google as a company bent on world domination.
Kin & Kindred
From 'googly'·A deceptive cricket delivery, later also describing unusually rolling or prominent eyes
Derived Terms
English words from this root
From '-le'·A frequentative or iterative ending suggesting repeated action
Derived Terms
English words from this root
Sources
Etymonline
Free Dictionary
Urban Dictionary
Wikipedia
Wiktionary