A.Word.A.Day --google

Tracing evolution of the term google takes us on a fascinating trail of how words are coined, change meaning, and get established in a language. Google, the search engine, was named after googol, a word coined by a nine-year-old boy. A googol is the number one followed by hundred zeros.

Larry Page and Sergey Brin used an alteration of the word googol to name their search engine, Google, and later Larry suggested its verb form:

“We plan to have a much bigger index than our current 24 million pages soon. ... Have fun and keep googling!”
Larry Page; Google Friends Mailing List; Jul 8, 1998.

Interestingly, the verb google has been around for more than a hundred years, though in a different sense. In a game of cricket, to google is to throw a googly, a ball that changes direction mid-air.

googly (cricket, 1901)		googol (math, 1940)
⇩		⇩
to google (cricket, 1907)		Google (search engine, 1997)
		⇩
		to google (to search, 1998)

USAGE:

“To google is now in broad usage as a verb for retrieving information from the Internet. If the tech giant has its way, ‘I Googled’ will become a standard reply to the question, ‘How did you get here?’”
In the Self-Driving Seat; The Economist (London, UK); May 31, 2014.

See more usage examples of google in Vocabulary.com’s dictionary.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:

Familiarity is a magician that is cruel to beauty but kind to ugliness. -Ouida [pen name of Marie Louise de la Ramee], novelist (1839-1908)