Amusing bug in Thesaurus

[dondiego87]

Using the Thesaurus widget in Dashboard, when I search for "metric" I get the result for "crown." The little indicator on the right says that it's in the "M" section (compare with a search for "crown," which results in an indicator of "C"). A dictionary search for "metric" brings up the correct results.

This doesn't seem to happen with any other word, although of course I didn't go through the entire dictionary to test it.

I'm running Mavericks 10.9.1, and apparently this happens for my co-worker as well. Does anyone else have this bug?

 

[Jodles]

It's not a bug. Open Dictionary.app, thesaurus, type in "crown". As you type you can see on the left hand side the results narrow down. The only close results left are for "metric crown". There are no thesaurus entries for "metric" on its own.

 

[dondiego87]

Well that explains what's happening, I suppose. The bug, then, is that the Thesaurus widget doesn't say "No results" for "metric." Look at what happens if you search for "meter" in Thesaurus.app. It gives you a list of "Did you mean?" suggestions. In the Thesaurus widget, if you search for "meter," it just says "'meter' could not be found." That behavior should be happen for "metric" too. Some might argue that this is a feature -- finding a defined phrase based on a search for one word within that phrase -- but in the context of the Thesaurus widget it just looks sloppy.