Categories
Reference Sites Useful Web

MSN Search as a dictionary

While at the 2nd annual MSN Butterfly Tour the topic came up of using search to look up the definition of words.  I mentioned to the testers that it can be done by using the “define” keyword. 


For example, say I want to look up the definition of the word “sibilance” to make sure I’m using it correctly.  Typing “define sibilance” into the MSN tool bar or the MSN search page will return your typical search results, but at the top of the page you’ll find a definition of the word from Encarta.


MSN search supports a variety of phrases to tell it you want specific information.  You can get the same results as “define” by using the phrases “what is [word]” or “what is the definition of [word]?” (but typing “define” is, of course, fastest).


Here are some other cool searches:



Why waste time going to the bookshelf for a dictionary or encyclopedia?

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.
https://www.little.org/blog/2005/09/28/msn-search-as-a-dictionary/
www.little.org
crawl=CC-MAIN-2022-27
73561
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:MJCBGB6ZTRQUZBMUIDHOLGKLTL6VI6QI
<urn:uuid:22c5dcc7-0789-4b43-9db7-3cb02e154b32>
2022-07-02T22:43:34Z
67.205.13.128
text/html
sha1:AGTPZSU6WOHO3PH4P6TBR3OSAQM2TSNE
<urn:uuid:1eb838a8-48ce-4ab0-aeab-fdc8c5d66b60>
https://www.little.org/blog/2005/09/28/msn-search-as-a-dictionary/
response
<urn:uuid:f620918f-6d46-49a4-9835-e2ebe296851e>
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2022-27
publisher: Common Crawl
description: Wide crawl of the web for June/July 2022
operator: Common Crawl Admin (info@commoncrawl.org)
hostname: ip-10-67-67-246
software: Apache Nutch 1.18 (modified, https://github.com/commoncrawl/nutch/)
robots: checked via crawler-commons 1.3-SNAPSHOT (https://github.com/crawler-commons/crawler-commons)
format: WARC File Format 1.1
conformsTo: https://iipc.github.io/warc-specifications/specifications/warc-format/warc-1.1/