Definitions
Wiktionary
- n. cricket A ball, bowled by a leg break bowler, that spins from off to leg (to a right-handed batsman), unlike a normal leg-break delivery.
- adj. Of the eyes, bulging.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. (Cricket) a cricket ball bowled as if to break one way that actually breaks in the opposite way.
WordNet 3.0
- n. a cricket ball bowled as if to break one way that actually breaks in the opposite way
Etymologies
- The etymology is uncertain but it is linked to Bernard Bosanquet, who developed such a delivery. It may be important that the word was first reported during one of his New Zealand matches. (Wiktionary)
Examples
“It's not just buildings by such textbook giants as Frank Lloyd Wright that seem precious — there are movements to save old neon-lit motels and those over-the-top "googly" - style fast-food joints from the '50s.”
“* A googly is a kind of pitch similar to a baseball pitch or a bowling throw in the game cricket; a wicked googly would be a really good pitch.”
Indian Premier League bowls wicked googly* to the world on YouTube
“A googly is a ball delivered by a bowler that looks as if it ought to break from left to right across the bat of a right-handed batsman.”
“But the most extraordinary thing about his success here is that Mr. Swann is basically an ordinary player: There ' s nothing flashy about him, he doesn ' t bowl a " googly " or a " doosra " or any of the other mystery deliveries that can leave batsmen looking bewildered.”
“Lastly, I put drops of Wilton black icing gel atop the marshmallows in a "googly" kind of way.”
“Back in the late 1970's (maybe early 1980's) there was a brand of Peanut Butter that had the Jelly swirled into it (predating the Smuckers version) and it was called "googly" or something.”
Comic Book Urban Legends Revealed #155 | Comics Should Be Good! @ Comic Book Resources
“For 'googly' is nothing but a little initiation test, a code-word given at the start of the interview to see if you know the countersign and can be let onto the premesis of actual question no pun intended.”
“But you clearly believe, bizarrely, that the 'googly' is something which equalizes the field - when it is the 'googly' that in fact disguises a simple question in condensed, oblique language, and therefore is only a further advantage thrust at the well-prepared girl or boy who has had such strangely codified questions fired at them for months, who know 'googlies.”
“A 'googly'finds out those with a pedestrian, but well drilled, brain.”
“Hello, Miss Fournier," Fred said, going kind of googly-eyed.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘googly’.
-
The Whole Ball of Wax
Feel free to wax poetic.
the whole ball of..., wax poetic, wax, beeswax, ambergris, cedar waxwing, sealing wax, earwax, paraffin, bougie, epicuticular wax, waxing gibbous moon and 192 more...
-
cricket
everything cricket
backlift, bail, batsman, batsmen, batswoman, batswomen, beamer, blockhole, bodyline, bosie, bouncer, boundary and 471 more...
-
Googleglotton
Googley words
Google Glass, google, plus, +, Googlism, googlebombs, googlewhack, googlebombing, googlebomb, googleplex, googleable, googles and 43 more...
-
Words that look like adverbs but aren't
manly, womanly, ungainly, slovenly, homily, costly, dastardly, family, sparkly, wrinkly, oily, orderly and 69 more...
-
Cricket!
Despite not understanding the game at all, I love the vocabulary.
run-a-ball, roundarm, silly mid-off, mongoose bat, dlf maximum, citi moment of su..., ipl, across the line, agricultural shot, all out, anchor, ashes and 76 more...
-
mager's Words
enigmatic, pragmatic, pulchritudinous, nincompoop, annihilation, sociality, entailment, acrosome, egalitarian, culture, technocracy, shenanigan and 541 more...
-
i don't like cricket, i love it
Words without which cricket could not be.
keeper, stumper, bad light stopped..., wicket keeper, rain stopped play, sight screen, bodyline, leg bye, duck, duckworth-lewis, t20, one-day game and 245 more...
-
Sportie: Cricket
Wordieworthy jargon from the impenetrable world of cricket.
wicket, on, off, pitch, howzat, stumps, bail, willow, inswinger, outswinger, seamer, duck and 132 more...
-
Odd-Ball
Just plain fun to say and wonder about their origins.
rapscallion, ramahanukwanzmas, cockamamie, nincompoop, hemidemisemiquaver, antiinterdenomina..., cattywampus, ragamuffin, tatterdemalion, blunderbuss, brobdingnagian, tintinnabulation and 127 more...
-
Umbersorrow
Intangible, anthropic.
States of being are listed on oofy.njiju, glark, deplore, afterlithe, tagmass, spuriosity, forkful, chelation, oding, ploat, botnet, quedeship and 477 more...
-
Words of the Times
Words discovered while reading The New York Times, each with a citation from the paper.
testilying, ghost talk, apneist, solastalgia, izakaya, hooker, telectroscope, airflyte, phomance, bromhidrosis, stinky feet, cupping and 482 more...
-
looked up
Words I've come across while reading and looked up in the dictionary.
deesis, pendentive, revetment, aedicule, stemma, patera, ephod, entrepot, corbel, exedra, volute, archivolt and 1408 more...
-
Words of the Day
glabella, chirotony, nook-shotten, crapehanger, filemot, swirlie, egosurf, lexiphanicism, Ruritanian, stichometry, chrononaut, faldstool and 2253 more...
-
Stellar Six-Letter Words
I've been meaning to make this list for at least a year, to go with Really Cool Two-Letter Words, Three-Letter Words, Four-Letter Words, Slightly Less Cool Four-Letter Words, and Five-Letter Words....
degust, tattoo, quahog, anoxia, acetic, rugose, bathos, umlaut, mohawk, python, harbor, panzer and 78 more...
-
jannygirl's Words
definitely, scrumptious, smooth, rocket, memory, tangible, groove, massage, drastic, sweet, silly, reciprocal and 78 more...
-
ricochet
carom, parados, vernal, free radical, rebound, recoil, skim, kick back, bound off, bounce, glance, skip and 6 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for googly.
michaelt42 It's good to have an excuse to allow a few cricket terms an innings. A googly bowled (not thrown, please) by a left-handed bowler is known as a Chinaman while, geographically speaking, a ball pitched by the bowler so accurately that the batsman cannot easily move backwards or forwards to take it in the middle of the bat, instead hitting it with the bottom, is a Yorker; such a ball usually lands on the point along the crease where the bottom of the bat rests when the batsman takes guard, known as the block hole. It is entirely possible, since Brighton (the setting of Greene's Brighton Rock) has a cricket field where Sussex play, that Graham Greene was inspired to entitle his novel, The Third Man, by the fielding position of that name. Lately, with the wearing by some fielders of helmets with visors, the fielder in the position of silly mid-on has moved so close to the batsman that the position could more accurately be renamed suicidal mid-on. Hit for six, which relates to a stroke by which the batsman hits the ball clean over the boundary, scoring six runs, is a common expression derived from the game. Forward and backward (of the crease) are used to nuance the description of the fielding position point and do not imply an evaluation of the player's intelligence. Finally, the popping crease is a line which the rear foot of the bowler must not cross before he releases the ball. It does not go pop like the legendary pea pod, nor for that matter like the weasel. However, violation of the rule about not crossing the popping crease with his trailing foot will immediately provoke the umpire to announce the bowler's misdemeanour by the call: No ball! May 1, 2013
knitandpurl "Unsurprisingly, the audiences got longer and more ragged, with a growing number of her loving subjects going away regretting that they had not performed well and feeling, too, that the monarch had somehow bowled them a googly."
The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett, p 41 of the FSG hardcover edition
Oct 13, 2012
gangerh Darren Gough now keeps calling this a 'google'. Why? Search me. Apr 21, 2009
pterodactyl See also googly eyes. Sep 14, 2008
elisheba i've read the article, which is really interesting. google and antitrust... Sep 13, 2008
john “As Google defines it, landing page quality includes a series of attributes — loading speed, user friendliness, relevancy, originality and dozens of other characteristics — that it deems appropriately 'googly.'�?
The New York Times, Stuck in Google’s Doghouse, by Joe Nocera, September 12, 2008 Sep 13, 2008
bilby Cricket jargon - a ball which turns in the opposite direction to that expected. Typically, a googly is bowled by a leg-spinner who flips the ball over the back of his wrist at the point of release. Nov 30, 2007