Google Definitions
Google’s ability to define words is slightly more useful than at first it seems. This is an ideal thing for Google to be able to do. It’s a long way from being a new trick—if you’re familiar enough with the web to use the Google syntax, you’re familiar enough to search for the meaning of words, even if you have to use Google to do it—but even so it’s useful to bring such tools as close to the user as possible.
The most comprehensive of Google’s sources, it seems, is WordNet, and I’ve been trying to find things it doesn’t know. I thought that principally British expressions may not feature—indeed, at time of writing, a search for what it means to carry coals to Newcastle returns nothing—but a search for the definition of Newcastle comes up trumps.