No ogooglebar

Google isn’t allowing Swedes to use the word “ogooglebar” as they please. “Ogooglebar” can be translated as “ungoogleable” in English and the meaning the Swedes have given the word is  “something that cannot be found on the Web using a search engine.” Google insists that since the word has “google” in it, it should mean things that cannot be found using Google’s search.  The Swedish Language Council makes a list every year of words that are commonly used in the Swedish language but are not in the dictionary. Ogooglebar was one of them. The Council did not want to change the meaning of the word, so it has taken the word off of its list. Merriam-Webster and Oxford English Dictionaries added the word “google” as a verb to their dictionaries in 2006. The definition given to google (or googled or googling) is “search for information about (someone or something) on the Internet using the search engine Google”.

Did you know?

The founders of Google misspelled the word “googol” when naming their company. Googol is the number one followed by a hundred zeros (10100).