what3words is a London-based global location tool that uses words rather than numbers to pinpoint places. It divides the world into trillions of three-by-three-metre squares, then assigns three words to each square to identify it.
The company was founded by Chris Sheldrick in 2013. Mr Sheldrick had been running a business providing music for events such as weddings in rural venues. After a lorry drove to the wrong coordinates in Italy—the difference being a single digit in a latitude reading—he concluded that any good location system must be "really simple". A mathematician friend suggested using simple dictionary words to identify each square.
what3words employs linguists who manually go through each country's dictionary, removing rude words lest they offend ("bottom" appears in the English version but not "bum") and homophones lest they confuse (English loses "sun" and "son"). Complicated words tend to be exiled to less populous places ("dodecahedron" often ends up in the ocean). The app requires around 40,000 words per language. It exists in 61 languages.
The app is used by satnavs of various car manufacturers and by emergency services across the world. Mr Sheldrick's firm earns licence fees and has a global team of over 100 people. If you are ill in the Australian outback or sinking in the English Channel, you will probably be asked for your what3words location when ringing the emergency services.
The tool has proved unexpectedly popular in Mongolia, where many people are nomadic. Ordering a delivery to a yurt used to be "virtually impossible", as directions were offered in phrases like "go three miles from this well; turn at that mountain". what3words has, according to Gan Chuluun Hutagt, a Mongolian businessman, helped Mongolia "leapfrog into the 21st century".
Mishearings remain a hazard. Accents make homophones hard to eliminate, and consecutive consonants can cause confusion: "rivers.sing.tree" sounds very like "river.sing.tree".
Truthful, adj.: Dumb and illiterate.