General

Frequency

In my last blog post I basically announced that the frequency of my posts would change in April.

I knew what that meant but I thought about the word frequency and decided that it must have multiple meanings. For example I think of that word meaning the number of times something happens (like how often I would post a new blog entry). But I also think of frequency as being related to sound for example a particular radio frequency (which I am guessing ultimately has something to do with numbers or how many times something might happen).

To find out how many meanings that word might actually have I used an online search engine. I simply typed in Define Frequency.

If you had no idea at all what that word meant would any of the following definitions enlighten you?

(1) Also frequence. The state or fact of being frequent; frequent occurrence.

(2) The fact or condition of occurring frequently.

(3) Frequency is a property of a wave.

Uh, excuse me, using those definitions I am now going to need to look up the words Frequent, Frequently and Wave to get the slightest idea of the meaning of Frequency.

Now, to be fair, many of the sites had multiple meanings listed that helped give me an idea of the meaning of the word. But the first two definitions I listed were the most common ones that I found, and if I hadn’t known the meaning of the word those definitions would have been useless in educating me about the meaning of Frequency.

Has this ever happened to you? Have you ever searched for the meaning of a particular word only to be confused about it’s real meaning when reading the results of search engines?

I admit that it has happened to me more than once….. actually quite frequently!