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Google Launches Dictionary, Drops Answers.com
ObsessiveMathsFreak writes "Google has expanded its remit once again with the quiet launch of Google Dictionary. Google word search definitions now redirect to Google Dictionary instead of to Google's long term thesaurus goto site, Answers.com, which is expected to take a serious hit in traffic as a result. Dictionary pages are noticeably more plain and faster loading than their Answers.com equivalents, and unusually feature web citations for the definitions of each word. This means that, unlike most dictionaries, Google considers ginormous a word."
I wonder why I haven't actually seen the snippets of definitions lately. I remember seeing them a few years ago. Not that it would had actually changed a lot - there's always lots of different sites linking to dictionaries on the first page of results.
Urban Dictionary has actually been the most useful one of those.
User ratings, definitions of almost all the weird (and stupid) words teens come up with and usually fun descriptions too.
Now get off my lawn.
Now we don't have to deal with M-W terrible website layout, popups, etc.
Ginormous IS a word. It's just a relatively new word.
If it's in the Oxford, then it's a bloody word! http://www.askoxford.com/concise_oed/ginormous?view=uk ... And that's the Compact dictionary - so it's definitely in the ginormous one!
Doesn't look like it's fully deployed yet. Google searches of the form "define:word" are not redirected to google dictionary yet. Which is a shame. Because that's one hell of an useful way of looking up terms.
GAAH! MY PRINTER IS ON FIRE!!! PUT IT OUT! PUT IT OUT!
How exactly does a dictionary list non-dictionary words?
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
Because it's also what answers.com does too. You wouldn't want a metasearch engine referencing another metasearch engine.
On that path madness dwells.
By doing this, Google may have wrested control over third parties, but has significantly degraded the user experience. Prior to this, each word would have a hyperlink to a definition. Now it appears that one has a link to "definition" for one word. Furthermore, in my sampling the definitions are very basic and not of competitive quality. For instance, the word cricket has for the first definition the sport, the second a slang use, and then finally a first grade definition as an insect. No etymology. No context.
I can only imagine they are doing this to in some way differentiate themselves from Bing, which could also use freeonlinedictionary or the like. Unfortunately for Google, MS has encata, which tends to not have slightly more sophisticated definitions.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
is there something I'm missing?
How much better can the OED really be?
Am I the only one to have the following three reactions?
Find free books.
"very unhappy"?
Really?
Do you realize you can still use it?
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Another word not in there is "poop", synonymous with poo, bot unlisted as another word for faeces.
Compare Google Dictionary's result: http://www.google.co.uk/dictionary?aq=f&langpair=en|en&hl=en&q=poop
which merely lists poop deck, with Answes.com's: http://www.answers.com/topic/poop
which is comprehensive and exactly what you'd expect from a dictionary.
I'd say Google fails pretty badly on this (relatively childish) example and isn't up to the job (or should that be jobbie).
Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. - Ambrose Bierce
I've used onelook.com for a while, which is another aggregator that (for now) seems to have more links than Google Dictionary does.
But Google Dictionary isn't just an aggregator, they provide their own pronunciations for some words (a really important feature IMHO), and a list of synonyms for some words.
I actually hope that onelook links to Google Dictionary, as strange as an aggregator-linking-to-aggregator might be.
My guess is that Google has been working on computational linguistics for such a long time (stemming has been important for search for a while, and Google lately has started throwing in synonyms to the search results) that it's natural for Google to start exposing some of their internal dataset to the world more directly.
Oh great, and slashdot craps all over the google link, presumably because of the pipe character.
Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. - Ambrose Bierce
You should've googled it.
irony++
Did you look at the whole page of results from google? It has the excrement definition in the "related phrases" and "web definitions" sections.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
Reach for the tinfoil hat indeed...
The reason they come out with new dictionary versions every year is that new words are added to the dictionary, and sometimes old words are removed, or have their definitions changed. I don't see any reason that online shouldn't also follow this trend, but the advantage to an online format is that the change can happen relatively quickly, once it's accepted by the editor, whereas some people still use decades-old versions of the printed dictionary and don't see a reason to buy a new copy every couple of years.
And there are some *print* dictionaries that include "ginormous" in the list of words. Language, by definition, is fluid. It changes over time, and the dictionary needs to change with it. "Ginormous" is a word that has made it into the popular vernacular, and it has a generally accepted meaning as a portmanteau of the words "giant" and "enormous". As such, it belongs in the dictionary, and it's only a matter of time before the remaining editions of the dictionary add the word. A language isn't defined by the dictionary, but rather, the dictionary is defined by the language. (it's already in the Oxford English Dictionary as well as the Collins Dictionary, and Merriam-Webster.)
Obligatory disclaimer: One of my two major fields of study in my undergrad was applied linguistics.
"We're a monopoly, you say? Sir, the word 'monopoly' is not even in my dictionary." ...in fact, everything from 'marzipan' to 'morass' seems to be missing.
I'm 35 and was using the word "ginormous" as a kid. Sure enough, it's in the Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
It seems no one yet mentioned Wiktionary.org. Over 1 536 000 + in French, a similar number in English. While there's obvious room for improvement, it's generally usable and often useful.
So here's my question, why does Google dives into a new initiative instead of jumping on existing trains? I guess the answers has something to do with control. Google wants to keep the control (which is understandable and not necessarily a bad thing). This Wiktionary-Google Dictionary is not the only example, Google Map Maker and OpenStreetMap.org is another one (both crowdsourcing map data, and yes, OSM was there much before).
Animoog.org
Of course. But Google is my default search engine. And the direct link to the word definition from search results is what I normally use. My point is, google has unlinked answers.com to provide an inferior service themselves. What exactly is the point?
OneLook has some other cool features, too, e.g. reverse lookup, pattern matching, and acronym-only search.
Did they come up with their own definitions for all these words? Did they "scrape" someone else's dictionary? Or pay someone for their content?
Yeah, I did. What I saw is a bunch of links to other sites that define related phrases.
When i click on a definition link that's on Answers.com, I get what you would expect from a dictionary - a bunch of definitions for the word I was inquiring about. Google Dictionary doesn't do that (in this case) - it gives one single definition out of the many available and then gives me other links to follow for what it calls ' related phrases'. In other words, i have to go to yet more sites to get the definition I was looking for when I clicked 'definition' and was taken to Google Dictionary.
It's not a dictionary. It's 'some' definitions (one in this case) and then a buch of links to other sites that may have the definition i want. Why do i want to hop from site to site in search of my definition? That's what i thought I was clicking on 'definition' for.
Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. - Ambrose Bierce
Web definitions /., is a technology-related news website owned by SourceForge, Inc. ...
...
o Slashdot, sometimes abbreviated as
o To render a web site slow or unusable via the unusually large number of page requests that result from a link on a very popular web site; To
o The act of self mutilation by an individual addicted to overclocking
So I played with the dictionary. Not bad. I like the multiple definitions, and possible links to chase down.
But what I *really* want is a 'distinctive thesaurus' -- a dictionary that distinguishes between synonyms so that you can get closer to the perfect word.
As an example,
Consider the differences between
Irony
Sarcasm
Sardony (Ok sardonic)
Facetiousness
All of them involve some degree of humour by stating things as they aren't.
If I look up sarcasm on thesaurus.com I get a longer list, yielding words that range from near to distant in their connotations.
acrimony, aspersion, banter, bitterness, burlesque, causticness, censure, comeback, contempt, corrosiveness, criticism, cut*, cynicism, derision, dig*, disparagement, flouting, invective, irony, lampooning, mockery, mordancy, put-down, raillery, rancor, ridicule, satire, scoffing, scorn, sharpness, sneering, superciliousness, wisecrack.
Yes creating my own distinctions is possible. So is writing my own definition possible. But trying to define a word from my own experience with a word is hard, and frought with potential pitfalls where my mental model of the word world is defective, so even harder is it to define the differences between closely allied words.
Anybody know of an online thesaurus that distinguishes between synonyms?
My own crack at the above four.
Irony applies to both statements and description. In events has a perverseness to it, poetic justice. In statements it has has less connotation of derision and mocking.
Sardony has a bitter, derisive quality to it. The object of sardony is most often the speaker, less often the world generally. Self-deprecating on steroids.
Sarcasm is a contrary statement intended to hurt someone else, to express contempt.
Facetiousness is similar to sarcasm, but humour is it's main goal. There is no intent to hurt.
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