Using Online Search Engines for Definitions
- Steven Murawski
In a perfect world, every term that you encounter in an Authority Document would be defined in that document or in one of the many aforementioned online dictionaries. Well, as Huey Lewis once sang, ‘Ain’t no living in a perfect world'. In such cases you will need to venture off into the deep chasm that is the internet and see if you can find a suitable definition for your term. In the vast majority of cases you will find a definition somewhere online. Use some creative search bar wizardry to find some of the more elusive definitions. You can play with the search filters to broaden or narrow your search, or you can search phrases such as ‘define “________” is’, or ‘“_____________” definition'. When doing this it is important to type the specific phrase that you are looking for in quotes to ensure that your results only reflect the phrase in question or could find yourself buried by a mountain of results that include any mix of the words within the phrase and in any order.
