"the google" noun was Re: Re: Word of the Decade Nominations Open for 2000-2009

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On Mon, Jan 19, 2009 at 9:37 PM, Amy West <medievalist at w-sts.com> wrote:
>
> This jogged my memory: this past week, on the 16th, there was a
> Doonesbury where Roland Hedley uses Google apparently as a synonym
> for the Web or the Internet: "Sir, according to my research on the
> Google, you've already been judged a failure."
>
> http://www.doonesbury.com/strip/dailydose/index.html?uc_full_date=20090116

I take that as simply a mocking reference to arthrous "Google", as famously used
by our outgoing President:

http://thinkprogress.org/2006/10/23/bush-says-he-uses-the-google/
"One of the things I’ve used on the Google is to pull up maps."

Discussed by Arnold Zwicky here:
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/005096.html

More recently we've had a similar example of improper arthrousness from Mike
Duncan, one of the candidates for RNC chair:

http://arstechnica.com/journals/law.ars/2009/01/06/we-have-to-do-it-in-the-facebook
"We have to do it in the Facebook, with the Twittering, the different technology
that young people are using today."


--Ben Zimmer

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