allusion

A nice piece of writing by Nicholas Carr - "the quality of allusion is not google", the quote loses it a bit but here is one anyway:

In making an allusion, a writer (or a filmmaker, or a painter, or a composer) is not trying to "outwit" the reader (or viewer, or listener), as Kirsch suggests. Art is not a parlor game. Nor is the artist trying to create a secret elitist code that will alienate readers or viewers... If you see an allusion merely as something to be tracked down, to be Googled, you miss its point and its power. You murder to dissect. An allusion doesn't become more generous when it's "democratized"; it simply becomes less of an allusion.

My intent here is not to knock Google, which has unlocked great stores of valuable information to many, many people. My intent is simply to point out that there are many ways to view the world, and that Google offers only one view, and a limited one at that. One of the great dangers we face as we adapt to the Age of Google is that we will all come to see the world through Google goggles

This shows the current tendency to define everything, as if that is the only form of meaning. But it is important to understand that there's more to understanding than a definition implicitly linked to a word or concept.