The owner of the new bakery in town, who has become a friend of mine, gave me a sample of marionberry pie the other day. I said it didn't seem to be sweetened with cocaine, and she didn't get the joke. I had to explain that Marion Berry was the mayor of Washington, DC, when he was arrested and convicted in a drug sting some years ago.

Whence marionberry? I went to onelook and there were no definitions, though a reference to another politico named Marion Berry turned up from Wikipedia.

Then I googled it: 27,300 googlits.

Two questions: For whom is marionberry named?

And, more interestingly, are there other words like this, with no onelook hits yet tens of thousands of googlits?

Made up words, nonce words, things like that aside, I don't think there can be that many words that are used fairly frequently in the world but don't show up in a huge compendium of dictionaries.

EDIT:

Dr. Bill pointed out to me that the mayor of DC was Marion Barry, not Marion Berry. That's what being away for a quarter of a century will do to you. He asked if it was another one of my puns. Well, sorta.

TEd (edited Augst 7 at 9:15 PM EDT)


TEd