Question

Example Before:

column x
yummy grains
blah blah
foobar 1
sugar daddy
foobar 2
fiber one

What I want after:

column x
yummy grains
blah blah
gooey foobar 1
sugar daddy
gooey foobar 2
fiber one

Answer 1

UPDATE `yourtable` 
   SET `column x`=CONCAT('gooey ',`column x`) 
   WHERE `column x` LIKE '%foobar%';

Note that this is one query (as evidenced by the last ;).

Detailed (not in the syntactically correct order):

UPDATE yourtable – for rows in table yourtable
WHERE column x – for those rows, where in column column x…
LIKE '%foobar%' – …there is foobar somewhere in the string (note the wildcards at both ends)
SET column x= – set column x of the row to the following value:
CONCAT('gooey ',column x) – concatenate (add together) the literal string ‘gooey‘ and whatever string was in column x.