Did they want us to stop using it as a verb?

[bugshaw]

One man went to Google, went to Google a meadow...
And got Results 1 - 10 of about 37,700,000 for meadow

Comments

[purpletigron.livejournal.com]

I dunno why Google think that they get to decide on what's an English verb :-)

[bellinghman.livejournal.com]

It's trademark law - so long as they can be seen to be defending their trademark against dilution, they get to keep it.

Excuse me, I have to go hoover the fridge.

[purpletigron.livejournal.com]

So the law requires risible and ineffectual bleating about inevitable language progression? Why am I not surprised :-) (I did know about the trademark thing really :-)

[bellinghman.livejournal.com]

It's one of those places where law and common sense meet, and neither exactly wins.

[bugshaw.livejournal.com]

What about John D. Loudermilk's song, Google Eye?
http://lyricsplayground.com/alpha/songs/g/googleeye.shtml
The word must have meant something before the ubiquitous search engine used it.

[bellinghman.livejournal.com]

I googled for 'Bellinghman' a while back. I discovered a reference to the US city Bellingham. Now, I can understand me making that typo, since I type my nickname more frequently than my actual surname, but for someone else to manage to mistype 'am' as 'man' is fairly impressive.

So, I wonder if it's even possible to make up a name that hasn't been used by someone, somewhere, sometime before, even if only accidentally.

(I suspect 'google' in those lyrics was intended as a semi-nonsense word.)

[tanngrisnir.livejournal.com]

I don't know the song, but when I saw that comment by bugshaw I realised that I had heard the expression google-eyed on and off for a couple of decades at least, usually in the mouths of Americans. Perhaps a corruption of goggle?

[bellinghman.livejournal.com]

Aha. Perhaps it's one of them Jazz words. It sounds suitably onomatopoeic.

[muninnhuginn]

Just remember to take all the biros out first ;-)

[bellinghman.livejournal.com]

Oh, those will dissolve in the diesel.

[ianmcdonald.livejournal.com]

I think the thing si to establish it in near universal popular use, and therefore it should not be capitalised.

[purpletigron.livejournal.com]

The 'G' will inevitably fade to 'g' with time.

[aardvark179.livejournal.com]

One man and his dog named spot got about 15,200,000.
"One man and his dog named spot" got 4

[watervole.livejournal.com]

But, "One man and his dog, Spot" got 53 hits. That's how I always sing it.

[akicif.livejournal.com]

We always sang "One man and his dog (wuff-wuff)" - which gets nowt!

[watervole.livejournal.com]

Our full version was "One man and his dog, Spot, three jam butties and a bottle of pop, went to mow a meadow"

That was the local Guides...

[darth-tigger.livejournal.com]

How about "one man and his dog, Spot, a bottle of pop, Old Mother Riley had a cow but didn't know how to milk it"?

[bugshaw.livejournal.com]

We sang "one man and his dog, Spot, bottle of pop, Old Mother Riley had a fat cow but didn't know how to milk it"...

[ceb.livejournal.com]

"one man and his dog, Spot, and a bottle of pop, Old Mother Riley and her cow, the kitche n sink and the girl next door"

[voidampersand.livejournal.com]

Great googly moogly!

[bugshaw.livejournal.com]

So "google" in the adjectival form has been around for a while (not that anyone's quite sure what it means...)