Although slightly less offensive than Santorum's unwelcome slang meaning, Mitt Romney will be furious to learn that according to spreadingromney.com, a website that now ranks among the top search results on Google for "Romney," the candidate's last name is a verb that means, "To defecate in terror." The link for terror, as it does on spreadingromney.com, directs to a story on the Huffington Post about how Romney's dog suffered that humiliation when Mitt reportedly strapped his Irish setter to the roof of his car in 1983 en route to Canada.
But it could be worse — Santorum came to be "defined" in the same manner. It means, "the frothy mixture of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the byproduct of anal sex."
A domain name search indicates that spreadingromney.com is registered by Go Daddy to Ayokay, LLC. Ayokay is an Indiana-registered LLC created on the first of this year, and according to its own website is a web design and development company. At a glance, it doesn't appear connected to any other campaign.
A new website SpreadingRomney.com now appears prominently among Internet search results for Mitt Romney's last name and defines ''romney'' as: "to defecate in terror". ''Spreading Romney'' was inspired by the santorum neologism coined in  Dan Savage's column '''' in response to comments made by former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum about homosexuality; Savage's readers voted to define ''santorum'' as: "the frothy mixture of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the byproduct of anal sex."

While defining ''romney'' as a , the word "terror" in the definition given at SpreadingRomney.com links to an article that appeared January 5 in '''' titled "Mitt Romney's Dog Incident Comes Back To Haunt Him". The article describes a 1983 incident where Romney was reported to have affixed his family’s pet  named Seamus to the roof of their vehicle for 12 hours while on a car trip to Canada; press coverage of the matter recounted how the animal let loose its bowels due to a fear response during the experience. 

Similar to online searches leading to the santorum neologism website originally created by Dan Savage, SpreadingSantorum.com, queries for Romney yielding top search results for SpreadingRomney.com are not limited only to Google but extend to other search engines including  as well.


'''' quoted search engine expert , who observed that the website had likely risen of late in search results: "I don’t recall seeing it recently, so it appears to be a new gain."

'''' reported that as of yesterday, SpreadingRomney.com had received 3,416  clicks from  and 1,261 posts on . The site appeared third in a Google search for Romney, directly below the former  Governor's Wikipedia page.

In a 2003 interview with the Associated Press, Rick Santorum compared legalizing  to supporting . Readers of the '''' advice column selected a new definition for the Senator’s last name, and Savage created a website SpreadingSantorum.com to promulgate the spread of the phenomenon. The term became a prominent result in searches online, and gained dominance on  including Google, Bing, and Yahoo!. 


Rick Santorum himself has acknowledged and discussed the existence and prevalence of the santorum neologism phenomenon; he was quoted by '''' on his assessment of Google's response: "To have a business allow that type of filth to be purveyed through their website or through their system is something that they say they can't handle. I suspect that's not true." Santorum criticized the response of the press to the phenomenon in a 2011 radio interview, saying, "It's offensive beyond, you know, anything that any public figure or anybody in America should tolerate, and the mainstream media laughs about it."

The company  manages the  for the website SpreadingRomney.com; the site was registered by an , Indiana-based company named Ayokay LLC which was formed on January 1. The website reportedly started operating on January 10.  commented upon it on January 12 on her program ''''. The founder of SpreadingRomney.com, Jack Shepler, informed Sullivan that he holds no ties to any political campaign group and formed the website out of a .

'''' noted that there may be another  this time derived from the last name of presidential candidate Newt Gingrich; linking to an established website for SpreadingGingrich.com. That site is currently asking visitors to submit suggestions for a new definition of ''gingrich''.