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Find Word search

What is a Find Word search?

The Find Word box

A quick search which finds main dictionary entries, such as alphabet, break, xylophone. It also finds subordinate entries such as the phrase in alphabet, or compounds such as alphabet book.

How can I run a Find Word search?

Type the word you want to find into the Find Word box, located at the top right-hand side of the browser window.

In Find Word searches, it is not necessary to type punctuation or worry about capital letters or hyphens. See also Special characters, hyphens, and case.
Click .
A list of results is displayed, or, if there is a single result, the entry is displayed automatically. When there is a single result, the latest version of the entry is shown.
Click on any of the entry names to move there.

If you do not find the word you are looking for, try a Full Text search, as your word may be covered by variant spellings or be found in a quotation.

More on searching

Results list
If there is more than one match to a search, these are shown in the results list. Use the list to move to the entries you want to see.
Using wildcards
You can make your search more complex by using the wildcards * and ?. Wildcards are useful if you want to search for several terms with the same root or if you don't know exactly how your term is spelled.
Special characters, hyphens, and case
How to search for accented characters and hyphenated terms. In any search you can type your search term in any combination of upper and lower case letters.
Full Text search
A Find Word search looks for main entries, compounds, and subordinate entries only. To search the entire dictionary text for a term, use a Full Text search. A Full Text search allows you to search a particular type of dictionary text (e.g. quotation text) and/or to search for words that occur near one another.
Example searches

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