Ojel

Yesterday, for reasons that need not detain us, I was scanning a long string of randomly generated letters to see if it contained any meaningful words. I noticed the string “ojel” and thought, “In Spanish, that would be pronounced ‘Oh, hell!’”

Today I started reading a book I’d never read, The Seven Sins of Memory by Daniel Schacter. On page 77, I found this:

Burke and MacKay describe a person who blocked on the name of the California city Ojai (pronounced “oh-hi”), and muttered in frustration, “Oh hell.” This similar-sounding expression immediately triggered recall of the word.