Google (verb)
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The word "google" was first used in the 1927 Little Rascals silent film "Dog Heaven", used to refer to a having a drink of water.
The verb to google or google it (yourself) is a neologism meaning "to perform a Web search" (primarily with the Google Web search engine) or an unknown set of files (the entire Web) with the Google search engine. "Mary googled for Wikipedia references." Contrast with grep. The coinage of the word is mainly due to the tremendous popularity of the search engine. The American Dialect Society chose the verb to google as the "most useful word of 2002."
An alternative usage of the word is in saying that some brand or concept "does (or doesn't) google," which indicates whether or not useful information can be found on it using a quick Internet search (commonly with the Google engine). For instance, a person named David Jones, or a computer program named "Click", doesn't google, since using either as a query would return hundreds of links unrelated to the individual or program in question. Similarly, really obscure things don't google because they return no hits at all. Both search engines and companies try to ensure that the most relevant results are returned first; thus, virtually every well-known company googles.
The word google can also be used as a noun, meaning "search engine hit." The derivative term kilogoogle (i.e. 1000, or maybe 1024, search engine hits) is also in use, but megagoogles are rarely heard of. As such, a certain search term might score 58 kilogoogles.
Google itself does not like this usage, fearing the dilution and potential loss of its trademark like Yo-Yo, Xerox and escalator (see genericized trademark). The company went as far as to send a cease and desist letter to Paul McFedries, creator of wordspy.com [1] (http://www.wordspy.com), a website that tracks neologisms.
The wide availability and ease of Internet searches has given rise to the acronym STFG (Search The Fucking Google), a variation on RTFM (Read The Fucking Manual).
External link
- Wordspy entry (http://www.wordspy.com/words/google.asp)