EVERGREEN DRAFT: 2016-2022
Can we talk about Google’s [1] dictionary? I feel like this goes beyond just “Google made a thing that isn’t that great”. Like this is actually harming English. Wait, hear me out! It’s like this. Googling a definition is so easy that it’s what most people will do if they don’t know a word. Which is wonderful but it means if I want to use some obscure, overly clever word, as I’m wont to do, [2] then I have to worry about how I might be misunderstood if my interlocutor googles the definition. If I care more about being understood than I do about using the impeccably exquisitely apt word (haha, but just imagine) then I need to shape my use of language in light of Google’s inferior definitions. [3] Which leads, eventually, to dogs and cats living together.
But this is different! Or forget my not-entirely-serious point about the evolution of English. When you google a word you should get the full definition(s). That’s all I’m saying. Step it up, Google! [1]
Here are examples I’ve come across of Google being all wrong-on-the-internet. I started this list in 2016 but seeded it by trawling every word I’d asked Google to define back to 2005. Hover over the links to see Google’s / Oxford Dictionaries’ (G/OD) or Merriam-Webster’s (MW) or Webster’s 1913 (WB) or WordNet’s (WN) or Wiktionary’s (WK) or Collins’s (CL) definitions.
mitzvah (G/OD vs MW): I guess making a dictionary — even such a shoddy, spotty one — as accessible as Google has still counts as a mitzvah. Which is pretty confusing praise if all you know is Google’s definition!
mercenary (G/OD vs WB): Google’s definition only mentions caring about money at the expense of ethics. I can be focused on money (in my case maybe farcically so) while being perfectly constrained by ethics thank you very much. (I might even say “optimizing for” rather than “constrained by”!)
bemused (G/OD vs MW): The Google definition omits “having feelings of wry or tolerant amusement”. Webster’s also only mentions the “muddled” sense so probably the other senses are newer. [UPDATE: Thanks to Cecily Carver for pointing out that this may not count as an error if the “wry amusement” definition is simply not accepted yet. I concede that that’s a legitimate call for a dictionary to make, to omit definitions that aren’t sufficiently established.]
waif (G/OD vs MW): The second sense is clearly gendered, which Google misses.
ancillary (G/OD vs MW): Google’s definition seems all wrong, only talking about “providing necessary support”. I think the second sense is just newer.
hinky (G/OD vs MW): Entirely omits the “nervous, jittery” sense.
quiescent (G/OD vs MW): I can’t find any dictionary definition that captures very well the sense of “having reached a state of equilibrium”, which is what I mean when talking about a quiescient technical spec, for example. Still, Google’s definition is incomplete and not as good as most other dictionaries. Worse, it doesn’t have a definition at all for the verb ‘quiesce’, only quoting a technical, mostly irrelevant definition from Wikipedia as the highlighted search result.
commentariat (G/OD vs MW): This is not just a synonym for the news media!
refractory (G/OD vs MW): The idea is there in Google’s definition but it doesn’t make explicit the “resistant to treatment, immune to intervention” sense.
poignant (G/OD vs MW): This one’s so egregious it’s evoking in me a keen sense of sadness or regret.
orthogonal (G/OD vs WK): So much more than literal right angles! Though that sense remains metaphorically in most of the definitions.
dibs (G/OD vs WB): The whole definition is literally the word “money”. Eye roll! (If you click to expand it mentions the phrase “have first dibs on”. Too little, too late, Google!) UPDATE: This got fixed! (Still no verb form, but that’s true of most dictionaries.)
come out in the wash (G/OD vs CL): You might object that everything I’m kvetching about will come out in the wash. In the American sense of “to be resolved eventually without intervention” — sure. But not in Google’s (also correct but very incomplete) sense of “with no lasting harm”. Because the eventual resolution involves losing nuances of delightful phrases like “to come out in the wash”!
kibitz (G/OD vs MW): I doubt Google will ever notice my kibitzing here, but I can dream… (My complaint on this one is particularly nitpicky — replacing “unwanted or unsolicited” with just “unwanted”. I’m fussy about it because Beeminder’s name used to involve a portmanteau of this word.)
cull (G/OD vs MW): There are two senses: to choose/gather, and to selectively remove. For the second definition, Google’s managed to cull every sense except the one about slaughtering animals. Wide-eyed-pig-emoji!
elide (G/OD vs WK): Kudos for including the more recent definition, I guess, but boo to eliding all but one technical sense of the main definition!
gird (G/OD vs MW): Technically Google has the “gird oneself for” sense as a phrase you have to click to expand to see. Another case of too little, too late, not to mention that this sense doesn’t require that particular phrasing.
comport (G/OD vs MW): The “accords with” sense is inexplicably marked “archaic” which obviously does not comport with modern usage!
confabulate (G/OD vs WN): The psychiatric definition is close but is too technical and specific. The interesting definition involves lying without meaning to.
onomastics (G/OD vs MW): Google only mentioning “proper names (especially personal names)” is pretty weak. (I’m pretty into onomastics and a good dictionary is critical for it!)
beleaguered (G/OD vs MW): Close but misses the harassment / being attacked from all angles aspect (other than when that’s literal, which is not the interesting sense).
pimp (G/OD vs WK): Google misses the sense of “to promote”. (I realize this word is distasteful due to its first definition but arguably no more so than the word “pander” which is the same other than the less distasteful definitions seemingly being more common.)
glib (G/OD vs MW): Misses the nonchalant / lacking forethought sense.
side-eye (G/OD vs MW): Serious side-eye at Google right now, ironically in the sense that their definition covers fine.
cow (G/OD vs WB): Not the noun! I’m sure all dictionaries do fine with what cows are. But if I’m cowing you, that needn’t mean I’m intimidating you into submitting to my wishes. That’s much too specific and sinister-sounding! I might be doing it inadvertently by deluging you with dozens upon dozens of dictionary definitions.
jubilee (G/OD vs MW): Google drops all but the “special anniversary” definition.
imputation (G/OD vs MW): More irony that I mean my imputations against Google’s dictionary in Google’s very limited sense of the word.
vacuous (G/OD vs MW): If you’re trying to use “vacuous” in any sense except “stupid/mindless”, Google’s definition is almost vacuous, mentioning only a vestige of the “empty/void” definition and falsely calling it archaic.
forensic (G/OD vs MW): Having done the forensics here, I conclude that Google’s definitions are a crime against language.
prophylactic (G/OD vs MW): Maybe if this listicle goes viral (that sure sounds gross) it will have some prophylactic effect against Google ruining English?
ecumenical (G/OD vs MW): I mean, these definitely constitute 31 word crimes. My point is that Google’s dictionary is so ecumenical that I’m almost maybe not exaggerating about the ruining English thing!
Ok, that’s all I’ve got as of early 2020. Unfortunately, despite years of compiling this list, it seems to be in no danger of quiescing. So, until Google gets its act together and gets a better dictionary, stay tuned.
PS: I know I wrote a whole other article about how you should write like you talk to your friends. The problem, of course, is that I actually talk like this.
PPS: This is a work in progress and I keep adding new words as I encounter them. Here’s my staging area!
"valence" 2020-04-15 Mary Renaud: "I think that, all things being equal, it’s good to participate in these (but I think that valence depends heavily on us keeping up with the things the researchers need in a fairly timely way)" patio11: "Christmas has a different cultural valence in Japan, and is similar in character to Valentine's Day in the US." "abdicate" 2020-04-16 Google misses the more generic version: to relinquish (something, such as sovereign power) formally "doh" (or "d'oh") 2020-07-05 The only visible definition when you google it says, bafflingly, that it's a variant of "do". "metric" 2020-11-10 Missing the "standard of measurement" definition. "lightening" 2020-12-11 HT Mara Stoica Google only gives a medical definition (Merriam-Webster too, but others get it right). "cottage industry" 2020-12-17 Google gives just one definition: "a business or manufacturing activity carried on in a person's home" "chimera" 2021-04-19 Google leaves out the "consisting of tissues of diverse genetic constitution" or "imaginary monster compounded of incongruous parts" definitions. You can't tell from Google's definitions that, say, a liger -- a lion/tiger mashup -- totally counts as a chimera. PS: Oh, if you click "tranlations and more definitions" you do get the missing definitions. So that's not so egregious, I suppose. "arrears" 2021-05-04 Google makes it sound like it can only apply to monetary debt. "prorogue" 2021-07-19 Google misses the "defer/postpone" definition. "redound" 2021-07-25 Google misses the simple "accrue" meaning. "etiolate" 2021-07-26 Google only has the literal botany definition. And maybe others from https://cecilycarver.substack.com/p/some-good-words "consternate" 2021-07-29 This verb means "fill with consternation" and consternation is dismay/confusion/frustration. That's pretty different from Google's "fill with anxiety"! "colophon" 2021-12-17 Maybe this one is ok, just that it marks the normal definition as "historical". "forensic" 2022-01-05 No mention of the "argumentative, rhetorical" definition. "gloss" 2022-03-07 HT etirabys As in "my gloss of the situation" to mean "my quick and dirty read which may not be correct/fair/etc". "tumescent" 2022-04-13 Here's an example of the Google definition adding something about sex with zero justification that I can find.
[1] Google didn’t actually make it, though they seem to augment and modify it somewhat. They license it from Oxford Dictionaries, which is also what Apple, Microsoft, and Amazon Kindle all use for their built-in dictionaries. So it’s a really big deal that that dictionary is so inferior. Ironically, it’s published by Oxford University Press, who also publish the Oxford English Dictionary (OED). The OED is widely considered the definitive history of the English language. But the dictionary they license to Google et al is nothing like it! That’s reasonable in that the OED contains far more than you need to know — namely, the full history of what every word has ever meant. Normally you just need to know what a word means right now.
The problem is that the Oxford Dictionaries dictionary that Google, Apple, Microsoft, and Amazon all use does not adequately do that.
[2] Or maybe I’m talking to a non-native speaker, or a dumb person. (Just kidding, dumb people!) And, ok, to be serious, maybe it’s a word I only recently learned myself so I’m not (necessarily) being a pompous ass in expecting a word I’m using to need to be looked up by a subset of the people I’m addressing.
[3] Did you know that English has the impeccably exquisitely apt word for “the impeccably exquisitely apt word”? (Google’s dictionary doesn’t know that. But at least it knows it doesn’t know!) Actually English didn’t have such a word so it borrowed it from French: “mot juste”.
Also, to clarify my suggestion that I prefer to use le mot juste than to actually be understood, what I really mean is that I care most about being understood by people who care about words like I do.