Wednesday, March 5, 2008

Stump my search engine

There are now more than 110 websites loaded into my “Black Blogosphere” search engine. (Look to your right.) We’re talking about tens of thousands of posts.

Wanna have some fun with it?

Try to think of a word – a single word in the English language – that does NOT appear in any of the thousands of posts on all those black blogs.

A word like watercress. That one only turns up twice... on Bossip and Crunk & Disorderly.

How about haberdasher? That also turns up twice... including Bossip again.

Hurdy-gurdy? It seems yours truly has been the only one to mention that word in a blog post. (By the way, did you see when Amy Poehler strapped on a hurdy-gurdy in her Dakota Fanning sketch last week?)

Mes Deux Cents is the only one to have mentioned parthenogenesis.

I did stump my search engine with crantini (a cranberry martini), but that’s a bullshit word. So I tried homunculus.

Stumped! More than 110 black bloggers... none who’ve ever used the word “homunculus.” Until today!

Give it a try. And let me know if you stump my search engine.

52 comments:

Anonymous said...

The word "parsnip" isn't there.

Only Anonymous because I don't have any of the other accounts. Lynne

Undercover Black Man said...

^ Parsnip... hee-hee. Well done.

Ashley said...

Damn. I even found "onomatopoeia".

Andrea said...

busker
gimcrack
triskaidekaphobia (fear of the number 13)

but those were hard to find!

Unknown said...

Bric-a-brac. I have it in my house.

Unknown said...

Chintz. You've got to think Martha Stewart.

Unknown said...

Towelette. Think dainty.

Undercover Black Man said...

Bric-a-brac. I have it in my house.

That reminds me: no Hummels either.

Unknown said...

My last one for tonight: schuss, what you do when you ski

Anonymous said...

It took me awhile, but I got two: semisphere and supercalifragilisticexpialidocious (it's in the dictionary, even!) :-)

If we could use two words, then vas deferens isn't in there, heh.

Damn you for having embiggens and cromulent on your blog (and you were the only one, too)!

Unknown said...

I thought I had you with theremin, but you were the only one in the blogosphere who had it! As heard on "Good Vibrations," for those who don't know.

Undercover Black Man said...

“Schuss” surprises me, because, as everybody knows, black men ski.

Anonymous said...

No dobro, either. Or sublimation. Plenty of sublimate, though.

Unknown said...

Dobro is good. Opens up lots of hillbilly instrument possibilities, like zither.

Unknown said...

Pesto and fusilli. I'm hungry.

Undercover Black Man said...

Only one black blog has kazoo. (Bossip again.)

Undercover Black Man said...

I bet somebody tried blarney... and was disappointed.

Anonymous said...

I found 4 for hummus but no babaganoush.

Mon-sewer Paul Regret said...

I actually got one in the first 20 seconds or so: paramecium.

*Tanyetta* said...

Your search - tilly wacker - did not match any documents.

Cal said...

Two I found real fast:

tintinnabulation

pell-mell

Cal said...

Another one...

heliport

Too much fun. You given another reason to waste time..ha ha

BrendaKay said...

I found two words that weren't there:

fattoush - a Lebanese salad.

amanuensis - a person who takes dictation (from my old stenography course.)

Anonymous said...

the creepiest word i know is teratoma. it's also the ultimate pejorative.
glad none of y'all have had occasion to use it.
parsnip! tilly whacker! chintz! good one!

bklyn6 said...

My first search was for one of my most favorite words ever, "callipygian." The first hit brought me back here!

I love "penultimate" too, but that drew several hits.

On my fourth try I searched "bacronym". Ding! Ding! Ding! Ding!

Does it count if it isn't in a regular dictionary?

bklyn6 said...

the creepiest word i know is teratoma.

O.M.G.!!! That's gotta be one of the most horrible things I've ever seen! *shudder*

I was reading Wired magazine once and there was an article about stem cell research (I think). The article described how body parts/human tissue could be harvested in a tera-f*ckin'-toma. And there was a picture of a flippin' tooth growing out of one!

Aarrghhh!

I couldn't finish reading the article.

Anonymous said...

"mitochondria": five posts.

"lutefisk": zero.

Lola Gets said...

See, when I used that feature before, I was looking the other way: I wanted to see just how many blogs featured these phrases: DL, hot dick and nuts (I came up first!) and swinging. I stopped there though. That feature could become really addictive, and Id never do anything else on the iNternets!
:)

L

Dollar Bill said...

Thought I'd be a smart ass(surprise!) and try to use a word that appeared in the picture for this post.

"learnedly"


Ahh! Success!

Anonymous said...

"Corpuscle", "papule" and "macule". Not many black, blogging doctors?

bklyn6 said...

Oh snap! "Harumph" and "verklempt" show up a few times!

Anonymous said...

dave

The word "prestidigitation" turned up only once.

Confirming my long held belief: Blacks -- and rightly so -- don't enjoy magic.

Cal said...

Dissentient

Unknown said...

I find it rather amusing the people who obviously always use a thesaurus when blogging have not replied to this comment.

I bet a few have 'thesaurus-check' versus 'spell-check'. Whenever you use a word that isn't enough letters, it prompts for a larger word even it is used out of context.

If you check closely, you might find onomatopoeia, triskaidekaphobia, sublimation and tintinnabulation were all used in the same sentence.

Anonymous said...

Unguent.
Since we don't appear to be barring foreign words, vichyssoise.
And since we don't seem to be barring slang either, splib (which, given cultural basis of these blogs, I'm surprised hasn't come up at least once in the neverending "n-word" and "colored vs. Negro vs. Black vs. African-American" discussions.)

Anonymous said...

There's no tinnitus in the black blogosphere.

bklyn6 said...

Since we don't appear to be barring foreign words, vichyssoise.

Okay then! I love this word, and it stumped the search engine: treppenwitz.

Anonymous said...

Neither fiddle-de-dee nor fiddle-faddle.

This was fun! I gave up on my SAT vocabulary and then just got silly.

Anonymous said...

I decided to use scientific words. There are no entries for endoplasmic, reticulum, and dipole.

Mes Deux Cents said...

UBM,

I don't know if you have this; it's a link to the Black Blog Rankings. There are about 900 blogs on the list. I thought it might help if you plan to add more blogs to your search engine.

http://www.elecvillage.com/files/EV-Blog/Villagers-BlackBlogRankings.pdf

And thanks for the mention. :)

bklyn6 said...

No hits for "aurora borealis," but two hits for "Northern Lights." :-D

Undercover Black Man said...

And thanks for the mention. :)

You're welcome, MDC. I hope you're chillaxing in style.

Dang... 900 black blogs? I guess I had better check that out.

bklyn6 said...

Last one for the night: "zoinks."

No hits? (I thought I might've used it here, at least once.)

Undercover Black Man said...

^ I thought black folks loved "Scooby-Doo"!

Anonymous said...

eleemosynary

red one said...

Ooh, this is great.

It's even got a sarnie, and a bacon sarnie at that. Why two watercresses and only one sarnie though?

Think I might be playing your search engine game for sme time...

bklyn6 said...

No "cantilever."

Anonymous said...

Dave, nobody used crepuscular, one of my favorites. Considering the kind of shows you write I'm sure you can get it to come out of someone's mouth somehow.
Meanwhile, slip it into the blog now and then, say, during the crepuscular perhaps.
Thanks for a great search tool.

Undercover Black Man said...

Both "crepuscular" and "sarnie" are new to me.

Linda said...

tricyle

Undercover Black Man said...

^ The heck is a "tricyle"?

If you mean tricycle, it's in there.

Thembi Ford said...

I cant believe I'm so late for this particular party.