How to Find the Meaning of Everything: “Define”

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One of the biggest problems we have when reading content on the Web is coming across words we’ve never heard of, in “computerese,” or the ubiquitous acronyms that leave us scratching our heads and tempt us to go back to the newspaper and give up on the computer altogether.
What is an interface? What does API mean? Or RSS, for that matter… It never ends. Well, once again, Google comes to the rescue. As most of you will know, the internet is full of resources that hold the answers to almost any question. The trouble is finding them. And then, which ones do we trust? A lot of people say Wikipedia cannot be trusted because it’s written by “regular Joes” just like them (as time goes on more checks and balances are implemented and for basic knowledge I find Wikipedia to be reliable, but that’s a conversation for another day). Well, here is how Google can help us.
If Google or iGoogle are not already your homepage (WHAT? Not already your homepage?!?!?! I disown you!), then type in the url bar at the top of your screen “google.com” (there’s another acronym: What is a url? Let’s find out). Once you are on the Google page, in the search box, type the following (we will use the search for the definition of the acronym “url” as our example):

define:url

It’s as simple as that. All lower case, no spaces. The word “define” followed by a colon followed by whatever you want to find the meaning of.

So let’s see what the results are:

The first definition is interesting because it does not contain the acronym, but rather explains in plain English what url means, simply “the address of a web page on the world wide web.” If you look at the other definitions I highlighted, you will see that most of them define url as “Uniform Resource Locator,” and one of them as “Universal Resource Locator.” If you look at the green underlined link below each definition, you will see where the definition comes from, and if you click on the green links you will be taken to the websites themselves and will be able to decide whether or not you trust the source.
What makes this method of discovering unknown meanings so great and powerful is the fact that you will see many, many definitions of the same thing, and even if some of them are a bit technical, there are bound to be at least a few in language that is easy to understand. Also, if many agree on the same definition, you can be pretty sure that it is correct.

Also, if you read the links in blue running along the top of the definitions you will see short phrases that include “url,” which if clicked on will lead you to the meanings of those phrases. And if you scroll down to the bottom of the screen you will find more blue links that offer all the definitions you have on your screen in a variety of other languages. Chinese, Dutch, Italian, Spanish and so on. Don’t you love the internet?
So there you have it, a quick, easy and reliable tool that will give you the meaning of everything!
Enjoy, use abundantly, and I’ll see you next time!

Tagged as: Google