Googling Wake

Yesterday, reading James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake again, and find a Joyce neologism, now normalized for the common roider, as follows: “googling.” Of course I’m not the first to find it, as googling quickly showered me.

Neverthelees, I mention it here thinking an article I saw also yesterday, (while googling “googling,” tho from March 26, 2013, of all saint’s day, in Associated Press but picked up everywhere) gives it renewed interest, to wit, the story goes, as I found it in news environs and accordingly summarize:

Apparently, Sweden has a council that every year publishes new words being used frequently by Swedes. And, in its December 2012 new words list, the council declared “ogooglebar” a Swedish word that had been ensconced in daily use. “Ogooglebar” being Swedish for anything that can’t be found by googling it, aka, looking it up. But, the company, Google, objected, wanting to limit the term “to google” (something) to actually using Google to google it. Something like that.

In other words, if you used Bing, you’d have to say, “Bing it.” And Swedes could then say, “obingbar.” Or, maybe you could simply say, calling out to look something up, “Search Engine it.” And, if not found, then you could say, “Bingless,” or, “Unenginable.”

In any case, the council decided to delete the word “ogooglebar” from their list rather than cower to a company’s attempts to control words on the street.

The two “googling” findings in Finnegans Wake are as follows:

One chap googling the holyboy’s thingabib and this lad wetting his widdle.

His mouthfull of ecstasy (for Shing- Yung-Thing in Shina from Yoruyume across the Timor Sea), herepong (malad venture!) shot pinging up through the errorooth of his wisdom (who thought him a Fonar all, feastking of shellies by googling Lovvey, regally freytherem, eagelly plumed, and wasbut gumboil owrithy prods wretched some horsery megee plods coffin acid odarkery pluds dense floppens mugurdy) as thought it had been zawhen intwo.

Finnegans Wake, James Joyce, 1922-1939, p. 620 (first entry above) and p. 231 (second entry), Viking Press, Thirteenth Printing, August, 1976.