Is Google dictionary a reliable source?
How do I search definitions on Google?
How often does Oxford Dictionary update its definitions?
Presumably a multitude of sources (for different languages). For me (English - not American!) inspection of the source for a search result shows mention of www.oxforddictionaries.com.
According to this blog post which was repeated by searchenginewatch, the Oxford Pocket English Dictionary is used, and the statistics on word usage come from their N-gram tool, which is now publicly available.
Meta posts and votes on them define policy, in that (insofar as Stack Exchange allows) the community decides how it should operate. Some aspects of ELU are mandated by the company; one such is the attribution policy.
In the absence of anything better, then the footnote on this answer with its upvotes is part of site policy.
However, I’ll state it explicitly so it can be voted upon.
[The attribution policy] does make for problems when answers simply reproduce the content Google supplies from a
definequery. Presumably Google have an agreement with their sources where they can omit any reference. I don't think we should endorse that, particularly when it's easy to provide cited references from original dictionary websites.
Google is a directory. They have recently taken to providing answers directly on their site, but do so without any attribution.
We would not accept a link provided by Google as an answer: an answer should be more than a link and should reference source material. Similarly, we would not accept a Google search link and text from the search results, which is arguably close to providing a dictionary search link and data from the dictionary results.
If this site were one where the questions lent themselves to Google’s calculator, we would not accept a bald figure as an answer: the method of calculation would have to be shown.
Consequently, no, we should not accept Google’s dictionary definitions at face value either. Google does not acknowledge its sources, despite simply reproducing content†; Stack Exchange policy does not allow unacknowledged material. The work is not Google’s: they have reproduced the work of others, and Stack Exchange policy is that that work should be acknowledged.
A side issue, but related, is that answers which reference Google definitions tend — often, but not always — to include only Google’s content. If there is anything which is original at all, it is very little. Stack Exchange answers are supposed to be complete, and are expected to show some originality of thought. Regurgitating Google’s summary of another site is short-changing the asker and providing a bad example to follow. The quality of answers generally goes down, and if saying “No Google” is a way to stem that progress [regress?] then to do so is useful.
As I said in my original footnote, it’s easy to provide cited references from original dictionary websites.
† This is easily demonstrated by using Google’s own search engine to find the real source of their text.
Don't cite Google as a dictionary.
Google has licensed two of the dictionaries from Oxford Languages for their search product:
- The Oxford Dictionary of English
- The New Oxford American Dictionary
These aren't bad dictionaries, mind you. The ODE is a large single-volume dictionary which gives very good coverage of Present-Day English, including many examples taken from the corpus Oxford used to assemble the dictionary. The NOAD is a version of this dictionary, not quite as good, which focuses on American English. The ODE and NOAD are not called by these names online; instead, they've been rebranded as Lexico (formerly Oxford Dictionaries, or Oxford Living Dictionaries).
Whatever you call them, it's confusing. The OED is a very different dictionary – a large multi-volume historical dictionary, not specifically focused on Present-Day English – but the acronym is very similar to ODE, so they're easily confused. And the "Oxford Dictionaries" name is likewise confusing, as the OED is the most well-known Oxford dictionary, but it isn't available at the Oxford Dictionaries website.
So it's a bit of a mess. But referring to these as the "Google dictionary" just adds to the confusion. Although Google has the license to present these search results without attribution, they haven't compiled their own dictionaries, and if you don't name the actual source, it's difficult for people to learn about the dictionaries themselves – their advantages and disadvantages, how they were compiled, what their purpose and coverage is, and so forth.
What's worse, Google doesn't return these results to all users. Many users on this site use Google in languages other than English, but the English dictionary results are not shown to all of these users. If someone cites the "Google dictionary" with a link to a Google search, the link simply won't work for many of the users on this site. That means the link is not a proper citation, and it should not be used on this site.
Even worse, imagine Google licensing another dictionary in the future. Apple did this with the Japanese language dictionaries included with its operating system a few years back, dumping one set of dictionaries and replacing them with another when it made financial sense to do so. Since Google doesn't name their sources, you can imagine this could turn out to be terribly confusing!
Linking to a Google search is just a bad idea. If you want to link to the ODE or NOAD, please link directly to the Oxford Dictionaries website, Lexico.com.
Google uses the Oxford Dictionary of English (worldwide) and the New Oxford American Dictionary (in North America) from en.oxforddictionaries.com to display definitions of English words. This can be accessed by typing define in front of the word such as "define apple" or other related phrases like meaning of apple, apple meaning etc.
Bing also uses the NOAD (US/Canada) and ODE (worldwide) to display word definitions in a similar fashion.
But Google has selectively removed many Oxford definition entries from the dictionary it displays. For example definitions of all proper nouns (such as famous persons, countries etc.) have all been removed and even definitions of contentious words such as fascism and alt-right have also been removed.
All these definitions are there on the oxforddictionaries.com website and even on Bing.
Comparision of Bing and Google Oxford Dictionaries:
| Bing | ||
|---|---|---|
| Definition for "United States" | https://i.imgur.com/14rbkq9.png | https://i.imgur.com/KfsLvIO.png * |
| Definition for "David Bowie" | https://i.imgur.com/SaL3oNO.png | https://i.imgur.com/5tNnspq.png * |
| Definition for "fascism", "alt-right" | https://i.imgur.com/loqmlW6.png https://i.imgur.com/s6Xfw46.png | https://i.imgur.com/ZvjGBgB.png https://i.imgur.com/MMax4PO.png $ |
Note:
*This is a "featured snippet" not Google Dictionary
$ Just a "knowledge graph"; no definition and no featured snippet
As can be seen while Bing includes all the definitions from Oxford Dictionary Google has selectively removed many entries. Just thought you should know as I was a bit confused when some definitions could not be found in Google's dictionary.