Microsoft's Bing Means 'Disease' in Chinese

Yesterday, Microsoft said it will launch a new search engine, Bing,. Many are curious to know what the word “Bing” means. It has many meanings in various languages, not all of them favourable.

Bing was introduced yesterday by Microsoft as a "Decision Search Engine". It is still not available to the public yet but will become available very soon. The word “Bing”, however, is stirring the Web audience. Microsoft’s CEO Steve Ballmer gave a brief definition of it at the All Things Digital Conference. He said they are going with Bing because it can “verb up” while promoting the phrase “Bing me”. He said Bing unambiguously refers to “search”. TechCrunch said they received a Chinese fortune cookie and they found the word “Bing” means disease. On this Web page, the Chinese word “Bing” could either mean “disease” or “side by side”.

Xian tian bing = congenital disease

Hou tian bing = acquired disease

Wired.com has more meanings for the word “Bing”. In the HBO show “Sopranos” the mafia family is often found hanging out in the restaurant “The Bing”. In Scotland, the word “Bing” is used to refer to the spoils from the mine (slap heap). So, it could mean “useless rubbish”. Urban Dictionary has a number of definitions for the word “Bing”. Most of them refer the word to “prison”. One word makes Bing an acronym for “But It’s Not Google”. Microsoft plans to spend $100 million for Bing's advertising campaign.