i was thinking about how I ask questions that I can look up on a search engine. even more than a book, it's not too expensive to get an answer from a search engine, so people might say "let me google that for you", implying that you might have just typed your question into Google's search engine to get an answer more efficiently. leaving aside that crafting a good query can be nontrivial, especially if the subject matter is new to you, I think asking a *person* a question also serves to inform that person that there's a question to be asked. in other words, a person may not realize there was any confusion about a term or phrase, and would continue to use it, assuming everyone knows the meaning or will find out, but if someone asks, then they might learn that, in that context, it's good to unpack the meaning.