It's difficult to create a comprehensive dictionary with all the words from a language and all of their meanings, so specialized glossaries explain the terminology from a domain (for example: philosophy). There are many glossaries available online, but it's not easy to find all of them using a general-purpose search engine.
Launched in 2002 as a labs project, Google's glossary search engine restricts the index to glossaries and other resources like Wikipedia or WordNet, while allowing you to find all the definitions of a word or expression. To use it, add the define: operator in front of your query: for example, type define:isometry in Google's search box.
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhU5V0z-jFjqVBfynLMOcGWcWyz0BW7jgz3U_1zo2VjyjUnukJZK2n8RPuGyT9Q9Wct5Ny-hg6yBro7Cuipq8U-SBkwcbFpXX5M0FmkdHx0lSLN4s3WhWsouXVq3nAF42-gQ0X3AcFh9YrM/s640/google-glossary-search.png)
The search engine works for 9 languages: English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Chinese, Russian. You can change the language at the bottom of the page.
So when should you use the define operator? If you search for:
* obscure words
* specialized terminology
* acronyms and abbreviations
An interesting alternative is OneLook, which supports pattern matching and reverse queries, but it only shows links to the definitions.