I first heard this word while working on an e-commerce web site at AT&T Broadband. It was used to described elements of a page or process that were designed to to help the user better understand what they were buying or configuring as well as helping then understand where they were in the ordering process.

According to Wiktionary.com disambiguation is a noun meaning the the removal of ambiguity. A few good synonyms are clarification, explanaiton, illumination.

I was reminded of this useful term of art while browsing wikipedia.org. Wikipedia uses disambiguate pages to help users find just what they are looking for. A search for quicksilver will display a nice example of one of these pages. Essentially these disambiguation pages list all the contexts this entry fits in. In the case of quicksilver Wikipedia lists Quicksilver the clothing brand, Quicksilver the software, Quicksilver as the archaic name for the chemical element mercury and several more entries for quicksilver.

If you haven’t taken a look at wikipedia.org you need to check it out today. It is an incredible open source style encyclopedia with almost 400,000 entries. It is the first best place to go for encyclopedic research.