No, I don’t mean the IPO that a Playboy interview almost derailed. I mean the growing sophistication of Google and other WWW search engines. I used to have to think carefully about my search terms, remember my Boolean operators (I’ve always loved that phrase–“call now, Boolean AND operators are OR standing NOR by–all the librarians just hit the floor laughing), try to match my sense of what I wanted with a sense of the likely indexing scheme the engine (or, in earlier days, the book) would have adopted.

Now, however, I just type in something like “what is a vortal?” and Google takes me to a list of sites with answers. And that’s not all, Ginsu knife fans. Because I haven’t done my search with indexing in mind, the associative trail is littered with more opportunities for serendipitous discovery, at least so far. Case in point today: “what is a vortal?” brought me eventually to Word Spy. What’s Word Spy? Here’s the way the site defines itself:

This Web site is devoted to lexpionage, the sleuthing of new words and phrases. These aren’t “stunt words” or “sniglets,” but new terms that have appeared multiple times in newspapers, magazines, books, Web sites, and other recorded sources.

Now, of course, I need to look up “stunt words” and “sniglets.” “Lexpionage” I think I can figure out. Ironically, none of those words is defined on Word Spy, though in finding that out I did happen onto the definition of “Google Bomb,” which I blush to admit was a new term for me.

Time for another search.