hurdy gurdy vs hurdy-gurdy

hurdy gurdy

hurdy-gurdy

adj
  • Sounding like the Swedish language. 

noun
  • A winch, a windlass. 

  • Synonym of street organ, often considered a misnomer. 

  • A water wheel with radial buckets, driven by the impact of a jet. 

  • A stringed instrument that produces a droning sound by turning a handle that connects to a wheel that rubs against a rosined string, with a keyboard also used to alter the pitch of the string. 

How often have the words hurdy gurdy and hurdy-gurdy occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )