{"id":2681,"date":"2026-02-22T13:03:56","date_gmt":"2026-02-22T18:03:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/?p=2681"},"modified":"2026-02-22T13:14:33","modified_gmt":"2026-02-22T18:14:33","slug":"word-of-the-week-update-googly-eyes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/2026\/02\/22\/word-of-the-week-update-googly-eyes\/","title":{"rendered":"Word of the Week Update! Googly Eyes"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Googly<\/a><\/p>\n

Being an academic includes, believe it or not, a measure of humility. So when\u00a0I covered this term here before, <\/a>\u00a0I wrote “my money, as well as Wikipedia\u2019s<\/a>, is on Barney Google, a nearly forgotten cartoon character. ”<\/p>\n

I may have lost that bet. There’s some evidence that Barney’s popularity led to a shift in an existing term.<\/p>\n

While doing some research on sites to visit in Northumbria, in service of a long-term plan to walk the Hadrian’s Wall Path<\/a>, I came across the legend of The Lambton Worm<\/a>, a crawling horror dispatched by local nobleman, Sir John Lambton. As a lad he went fishing and caught the creature, when it too was a youngster. He disposed of the strange “fish” by tossing it in a well, and trouble followed. You may recall the legend if you saw Ken Russell’s B-movie adaptation of Bram Stoker’s reportedly awful novel, The Lair of the White Worm<\/em>.<\/p>\n

I hope to visit the scene of these adventures, south of Newcastle, when I begin my rambles across the north of England. As for my evidence that I was wrong earlier about googly eyes? Doubts began when I found a folk-song composed in 1867 by Clarence M. Leumane<\/a>, and I’ll quote part of it here, after Sir John unwisely tosses the baby worm down a well:<\/p>\n

But the worm got fat an’ grewed an’ grewed,<\/em>
\nAn’ grewed an aaful size;<\/em>
\nHe’d greet big teeth, a greet big gob,<\/em>
\nAn greet big goggly eyes.<\/em><\/p>\n

The Online Etymology Dictionary<\/a> notes that our “googly eyes” comes from the older “goggly eyes” of the song, and, further back, to the 1530s and Middle English.<\/p>\n

Sorry Barney Google, our term is far older than you. Perhaps Barney’s pop-eyed look helped morph “goggly-eyes” to “googly-eyes”?<\/p>\n

\"Barney<\/a>Send words, stick-on googly eyes, monster legends, and metaphors my way by e-mailing me (jessid -at- richmond -dot- edu) or leaving a comment below. Want to write a guest entry? Let me know!<\/p>\n

See all of our Metaphors of the Month\u00a0here<\/a>\u00a0and Words of the Week\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Images: Picpik.com and Wikipedia.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Being an academic includes, believe it or not, a measure of humility. So when\u00a0I covered this term here before, \u00a0I wrote “my money, as well as Wikipedia\u2019s, is on Barney Google, a nearly forgotten cartoon character. ” I may have lost that bet. There’s some evidence that Barney’s popularity led to a shift in an … Continue reading Word of the Week Update! Googly Eyes<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":589,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[87405,40197],"tags":[2522],"class_list":["post-2681","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-etymology","category-vocabulary","tag-word-of-the-week"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pcsCNV-Hf","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2681","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/589"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2681"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2681\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2687,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2681\/revisions\/2687"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2681"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2681"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2681"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}