google

google

Here is one of the key new words of our age (in more than one sense of the word key), rising within the space of less than ten years (the first record in the OED is of 1999) from nowhere to almost total familiarity, even to those who are not computer-literate. Google, it hardly needs to be said, is the proprietary name of an Internet search engine, one of the great inventions practically alongside the wheel and the microchip in its usefulness. To google is to search for information on the Internet using a search engine, and like other verbs based on everyday activities derived from proprietary terms (hoover, xerox, etc.) it has a small initial letter when used in this way, because a verb cannot be registered as a trademark. For this reason, most modern dictionaries include the word as a verb only, which is both intransitive and transitive: one can google something sought

• (Met this woman last night at a party and I came right home and googled her —New York Times, 2001)

or one can simply google. No doubt in time the word will give rise to extended and figurative uses as well.