reverse dictionary

The reverse dictionary helps you generate words from concepts.

I suppose that there is a category of reference book called the reverse dictionary .

A separate index volume (1997) lists 728,000 entries for characters by their position within words and phrases, something like a reverse dictionary.

Reverse dictionaries of this type have been published for most major alphabetical languages (see numerous examples listed below).

He has added a reverse dictionary and a wild-card search (a superb way to cheat at crossword puzzles, incidentally).

Consequently, in these reverse dictionaries all words that have the same suffix appear in order in the dictionary.

Another use of the term "reverse dictionary" is for a reference work that is organized by concepts, phrases, or the definitions of words.

In the last hundred pages of Endangered an attempt is made at a reverse dictionary, yielding a more or less elaborate index to the dictionary section.

She also authoredThe First Name Reverse Dictionary, a reference book for writers.

My list was also merely indicative of the terms currently employed (five of them), and Bernstein's Reverse Dictionary mentions the other major divisions as well.

As we all know, if we knew the word we were looking for (and knew how to spell it) we should not have to resort to reverse dictionaries.

This feature can be used as a Reverse Dictionary, Related Words Finder, Trivia System, and Research Tool.

A reverse dictionary is a dictionary organized in a non-standard order that provides the user with information that would be difficult to obtain from a traditionally alphabetized dictionary.

Sammallahti, Pekka 2007: Inarinsaamen käänteissanakirja - Inari Saami Reverse Dictionary.

In theory, a reverse dictionary might go further than this, allowing you to find a word by its definition only (for example, to find the word "doctor" knowing only that he is a "person who cures disease").

Such reverse dictionaries as exist ( Bernstein's Reverse Dictionary having been a popular example for many years) work well for those users whose word sense coincides with that of the compiler.

His review of Bernstein's Reverse Dictionary indicates that he (and whoever revised Bernstein's book) are behind the times on boxing weight classes: featherweight should precede lightweight , [and other principal divisions have been ignored].

Reverse dictionaries of this type were historically difficult to produce before the advent of the electronic computer and have become more common since the first computer sorted one (Stahl and Scavnicky's Reverse Spanish Dictionary) appeared in 1974.

An example of this type of reverse dictionary is the Diccionario Ideológico de la Lengua Española (Spanish Language Ideological Dictionary) This allows the user to find words based on a small set of general concepts.

Bernstein's Reverse Dictionary; As a practicing lexicographer (I have complied two Arabic bilingual dictionaries with illustrative sentences), but more important, as one who continually has trouble retrieving certain English words from my mental lexicon, I consider this book a real gold mine.

Such a reverse dictionary would be useful for linguists and poets who might be looking for words ending with a particular suffix, or by an anthropologist or forensics specialist examining a damaged text (e.g. a stone inscription, or a burned document) that had only the final portion of a particular word preserved.

For example, A Reverse Dictionary of the Spanish Language and Walker's Rhyming Dictionary are reverse dictionaries, the organization of which is based upon sorting each entry word based upon its last letter and the subsequent letters proceeding toward the beginning of that word.