Word(s) that only ever appeared in one (hit) song, ever.

"Filibuster" - Birdhouse in Your Soul

"Looptid", from Digital Underground's "Humpty Dance":

I get stoopid, I shoot an arrow like Cupid
I use a word that don't mean nothin', like 'looptid'.

"Underpass" (There Is A Light That Never Goes Out)

"Checkers" ("MacArthur Park")

-- Dingbod Kesterson, Monday, 21 January 2008 12:08 (30 seconds ago) Bookmark Link

REM - Man On The Moon

Ah yes.

Alba xpost - you forgot "Underpass" by John Foxx.

"Alabaster" (Shoplifters Of The World Unite)

Bruce Springsteen - The Ghost of Tom Joad, also.xp

I never knew about Underpass. I am bad at this game.

Is "Mmmm Mmmm Mmmm Mmmmm" the only hit single to use the word "birthmarks"?

"Buck-toothed" (Ask)

Underpass also known as Underpants! cause that's what it sounds like he's shouting, ho ho.

"Alabaster" also in "Wrapped Around Your Finger"

"anaesthetised" (Placebo 'Bitter End' - tho i know Girls Aloud use it in the present tense on 'No Good Advice')

not a hit per se but 'underpass' also in well known 'Warm Leatherette'

"Peckham" ("'Ullo John Gotta New Motor?")

http://www.vinyltap.co.uk/gallery/ha/haleas5000934812935510.jpg

"Apropos" - Sheryl Crow 'All I Wanna Do'

"Buck-toothed" (Ask)

-- Alba, Monday, 21 January 2008 12:12 (1 minute ago) Bookmark Link

^^^"bucktooth" is used on "La Pastie De La Bourgiese", which was the lead track on B&S's top 40 "3, 6, 9 Seconds Of Light" EP.

"Peckham" ("'Ullo John Gotta New Motor?")

-- Dingbod Kesterson, Monday, 21 January 2008 12:15 (1 minute ago) Bookmark Link

^^^Goldie Lookin' Chain - You Knows I Love You

rebuffed
cordon bleu
parsons (green)

all from 'you will always find me in the kitchen at parties'

argh palmers green i mean

"Underpass" is surely represented in John Foxx' "Underpass" as well.

"The Clapping Song" has "materialize" and "rowboat". Any joy there?

Not a hit song as such, but there's an early Elton John song entitled "Grimsby" which includes the line "No Cordon Bleu can match the beauty of your pies and peas."

D12 - My Band "acapellas"

missy doesn't pluralise that in 'lose control'

Caramba's "Hubba Hubba Zoot Zoot" is crowded with words that have only ever appeared in that particular song:

Hubba hubba zoot zoot
Num
Deba uba zat zat
Num
A-hoorepa hoorepa a-huh-hoorepa a-num num
A-num
Hubba hubba zoot zoot
Num
Deba uba zat zat
Num
A-hoorepa hoorepa a-huh-hoorepa a-num num
A-num
Hubba hubba zoot zoot
Deba uba zat zat a-num num
Hubba hubba zoot zoot
Deba uba zat zat a-num num
A-hoorepa hoorepa a-huh-hoorepa a-num num
A-hoorepa hoorepa
HAH
A-huh-hoorepa a-num num
A-num
Hubba hubba zoot zoot
Deba uba zat zat a-num num
Hubba hubba zoot zoot
Deba uba zat zat a-num num
A-hoorepa hoorepa a-huh-hoorepa a-num num
A-hoorepa hoorepa a-huh-hoorepa
HAH
A-num num
A-num
Hubba hubba zoot zoot
A-huh zoot a-huh
Deba uba zat zat a-num num
Hubba hubba zoot zoot
Deba uba zat zat a-num num
A-hoorepa hoorepa a-huh-hoorepa a-num num
Num
A-hoorepa hoorepa a-huh-hoorepa a-num num
Deba uba zat zat
A-hoorepa hoorepa a-huh-hoorepa a-num num
a-num
Hubba hubba zoot zoot
deba uba zat zat
HAH
A-hoorepa hoorepa a-huh-hoorepa a-num num
A-num
Hubba hubba zoot zoot
Deba uba zat zat a-num num
Hubba hubba zoot zoot
Duuh
Deba uba zat zat a-num num
A-hoorepa hoorepa a-huh-hoorepa a-num num
A-hoorepa hoorepa a-huh-hoorepa a-num num
HAH
A-num
Hubba hubba zoot zoot
Deba uba zat zat a-num num
Hubba hubba zoot zoot
Deba uba zat zat a-num num
A-hoorepa hoorepa a-huh-hoorepa a-num num
A-hoorepa hoorepa a-huh-hoorepa a-num num
HAH
Hubba hubba zoot zoot
Deba uba zat zat a-num num
HOH
Hubba hubba zoot zoot
Hubba hubba mo-re mo-re
Deba uba zat zat a-num num
A-hoorepa hoorepa a-huh-hoorepa a-num num A-hoorepa hoorepa a-huh-hoorepa a-num num A-num

Did Orinoco ever appear in another song but "Orinoco Flow"?

Not in the Womble song.

"clarify" and "classify" - 99 red balloons

Abacab
Paranoimia (mentioned in the song iirc)
Paninaro

"Classify" is in "Pop" by N'Sync

(That Caramba song may not have been a worldwide hit, but it was huge in Scandinavia)

Interactive (Bis, 'Kandy Pop')
CD-Rom (Will Smith, 'Just The Two Of Us')
Will Oldham (Biffy Clyro, 'Saturday Superhouse')

someone gonna write a song with all these words in so we can launch it top 40 (must beat that shitty Lloyds song)

CD-Rom (Will Smith, 'Just The Two Of Us')

^^^Busta Rhymes - Fire It Up

Busta sez 'CD-Rom' in 'Fire It Up'

"Firestarter" ?

"Get Busy" has "percolate" and "oscillate"

Born Slippy gauntlet:

succulent
derailed
high-density

Scaramouche
Fandango
Bizmillah

fandango also in Whiter Shade of Pale

Of course.

"Vestal Virgins"...?

More possiblities from another overblown epic:

Bustle
Hedgerow

"Pig skin" - paranoid android

"Pig skin" - In the End - Linkin Park

System of A Down - Chop Suey, "Self-righteous"

who'd a thought it

xp

surely Prince is not alone with 'Corvette'?

^^^Eiffel 65 - Blue

think we did this before but there really aren't that many hits mentioning 'the internet'. Mousse T's 'Horny' was the first one I recall.

From "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes":

Thrill me to the marrow

"Pitchfork" appears in one hit song.

"Combine Harvester" by The Wurzels.

I thank you.

― Mark G, Monday, 6 June 2011 09:27 (twelve years ago) bookmarkflaglink

Which also has "gaiters", "wurzels" and "gallivanting".

The Wurzels' "I Am a Cider Drinker" has "britches", "tadpoles" and "newts"

("scrumpy" appears in both songs so is disqualified.)

Meanwhile their minor (#32 hit) "Farmer Bill’s Cowman" has "smock", "broody", "faggots" (the foodstuff), "squelching", "drake", "muck", "shovel", "milking", "ploughman" and "Somerset".

isinglass
noun
1. a kind of gelatin obtained from fish, especially sturgeon, and used in making jellies, glue, etc. and for fining real ale.

Blossom Dearie "Surrey With the Fringe On Top".

The song is also linguistically significant for containing the only recorded use of the word "abacinate", as mentioned in Christopher Foyle's Foyle's Philavery: A Treasury of Unusual Words.[21]

Nat King Cole omits "abacinate" from his version of Surrey with the Fringe on Top. I'll have to check out Blossom Dearie's version.

Half Man Half Biscuit’s ‘Rawlplugs of yesteryear’ appears to be the sole use of ‘Rawlplugs’ in a song. Thermoplastic from the same song has been used 7 times according to Lyrics.com.

The song is also linguistically significant for containing the only recorded use of the word "abacinate", as mentioned in Christopher Foyle's Foyle's Philavery: A Treasury of Unusual Words.[21]

― Kate (rushomancy), Sunday, November 17, 2024 1:54 AM (seven months ago) bookmarkflaglink

it's in slayer's "angel of death"

In fact it's mentioned up on the page, next to the little discussion about Saskatchewan. I still dream of that place. "Wrap me in your blanket, dance me around." And then it turned out that Buffy Sainte-Marie was a huge fake! Who can you trust.

Or is it whom? I think it is. "You can trust her" = "whom". "He is untrustworthy" = "who". So it's whom can you trust. You can trust her. Whom can you trust. Who trusts you? She trusts you. Who trusts you? She trusts you. Whom can you trust. You can trust her. Whom can you trust. You can trust her. I want to take the blanket off. I want to take the blanket off. But I can't! I hop, and when I hop I never get off the ground. I want to take the blanket off.

Whom. Google Street View makes me feel sad. For all the places I'm never going to visit. Because it's easy to click a mouse and look at the world from the comfort of my mostly-unflooded wine cellar. Easy and free. It's hard to actually go places and also expensive. I've followed the road up into the Northern Territories. It ends at a place called Pingo Canadian Landmark:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pingo_Canadian_Landmark

What is a pingo? It's an ice-filled mound. They're essentially surface volcanos - but filled with water instead of lava. The water that freezes into ice, pushing up the ground into a small hill. Pingo Canadian Landmark contains one-quarter of the world's supply of these things. I often wonder why the British Empire didn't strip-mine Canada before handing the place over to the Canadians. We could have had that ice! We could have used it to quadruple the land area of the United Kingdom. Those trees were ours. The permafrost, the peat, the soil. All of that was ours. And we just gave it away to a bunch of people who don't appear to have done anything at all with it. But perhaps they're keeping it for last. As the climate warms the people of Canada will migrate north. They have empty space. And we have Scotland. The future is north.

Is El Chombo's "Chacarron" cheating? It was a hit in the UK back in 2006. It got to #20 and then went on to become an internet thing. The chorus is "menauhmaunowhaunommoohonoomoo". But you can't have nonsense songs. Such as e.g. Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick, and Titch's "Zabadak", for example. Because the lyrics aren't words, they're sounds, and there are more sounds than there are words. Like "eek" and "ooh". For example. "Gah". "Ptong". "Zrrap". The Futurists had something to say about that.

It's the heat. That's why I'm digressing. It's hot. Big Science, Laurie Anderson. That's the next topic. She was smart! She still is. An actual artist with an arts degree. The words on that album are really simple. The vocabulary is straightforward. She doesn't use distemper or ostensibly. Almost as if she wanted to communicate her message in the most effective way, to the widest possible audience. And that, my friends, that is why I use short words. And slightly longer words, but common words. That is the reason. That is why. That is why I am concise.

"Water is just hot ice." - James Harkin

^ an improvement over what a friend of mine used to be fond of saying, "farts are just gaseous shit"

Just like Pagliacci did / I try to keep my sadness hid

Smokey Robinston and the Miracles, Tears of a Clown

The song "Mr. Sandman", written by Pat Ballard and popularized in 1954 by The Chordettes, references Pagliacci in the lines, "Give him a lonely heart like Pagliacci, And lots of wavy hair like Liberace."[44]

"Equivalency" - in "I'll Play the Fool for You" by Dr. Buzzard's Original Savannah Band (a minor US hit, but Top 20 in the Netherlands!)

And I'm gonna go to school again, boy, for you
Just to get my equivalency diploma

“Imbecile” in The Safety Dance by Men Without Hats.

Saw Spoon play "The Way We Get By" on Monday, the only song I know to feature the word "taciturn."

“Tragedian” in Smash Mouth’s “Then the Morning Comes”

"My Girl Josephine" by Fats Domino: "I used to tote you on my back"

#14 on the Billboard pop chart. Is this the highest ranking use of "tote" as a verb in a pop song?

or in fact the only

Prince's "Sign o' the Times" went to #3 and had the lyric "totin' a machine gun"

ah ha!

Zip-a-doing dwoinggg

Just had a thought, is "critique" only used in Ray Stevens' "The Streak" ?

"smack dab" in "Up on the Roof" (as made famous by The Drifters)?

droogie don't crash here

from Suffragette City

doo-lang doo-lang doo-lang

from He's So Fine

xp

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVXEiHkwTQM

Xp "Imagine Me Imagine You" by Fox

'flailing' - Losing My Religion.

Never heard that Ray Charles song before! Yikes at "A ten-room house / Some barbecue / And fifty chicks not over twenty-two."

"Flailing" reappears on Blink-182's radio breakthrough "Dammit."

I stand corrected on flailing.

Tom Lehrer must have a few. We'll all go together when we go comes to mind
https://tomlehrersongs.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/we-will-all-go-together-when-we-go.pdf

Agreed that there are some unusual words in there but I think it stretches the criterion of "hit."

Thinking about it further. The word "Hottentot" appears in "We Will All Go Together When We Go."

That Was the Year that Was did appear on the album chart, albeit not with that song.

On a further tangent the song "If I Were King of the Forest" from The Wizard of Oz includes the lyric "What made the Hottentots so hot?" It could be fairly argued that The Wizard of Oz soundtrack was a hit, not sure if that helps.

fair point about this hardly being a 'hit'.

Yeah no aspersions on you, giraffe; if you look upthread there are a lot of pretty niche suggestions.

This got me to wondering if Paul Simon's "Boy in the Bubble" is the only major hit with the word staccato in it.

Back in 2020 Tory Lanez released a whole song called "Staccato", but it didn't chart anywhere, and I can't find another example. Staccato is a common enough word, but it's slightly too posh-sounding, and also it has too many syllables to use easily in a rhyme. You say star-car-toe, I say stack-a-toe.

Lanez' song has the lyrics "I'm hotter than Folgers / money so thick, can't fold it, I told-ya / came back, put my baby mama in a Rover / Card got no limit, bitch, I'm a soldier", which is presumably supposed to be about a Range Rover, but I can't help but imagine him giving his girlfriend a Rover Metro 1.3HLS and bragging about the fuel economy.

"Staccato signals of constant information / a loose affiliation of millionaires and billionaires". They had millionaire and billionaires in the 1980s. And lasers in the jungle. Now there are more of them.

I have never heard another human being pronounce staccato in the ways you mention.

If you grew up with holes in your stack-a-toes, you'd celebrate the minute your star car gets towed.