Full-text search

ABBYY Lingvo can perform full-text searches for your query word or phrase in the whole text of all active dictionaries of the current pair of languages.

How does full-text search work?

Suppose you need to translate the phrase «мастер на все руки» from Russian into English. There is no such phrase in the Lingvo Word List but you can perform a full-text search. This phrase may be present in the examples or comments sections of several dictionary entries. Once you have seen this phrase and its translations in different cards, you will be able to choose the translation that best suits your context. Note also that you can enter your query words in any grammatical form.

To search for a word or a phrase in all Lingvo dictionaries:

• Type the necessary word or phrase in the Edit Line and click . You can also select the Find Text from Edit Line on the Tools menu or press CTRL+F. 

A Search window appears where you can see a list of cards organized into several groups:

• Cards in which the query words appear as headings. Cards with one-word headings and cards with multi-word headings are shown separately;
• Cards in which the query words appear in the translations section;
• Cards in which the query words appear in the examples section;
• Cards in which the query words appear in the comments section.

1. In the Search window, next to each search result you can see the name of the dictionary in which the query word has been found.
2. If the number of cards is too large, you can browse the list by pressing CTRL+Page Down or CTRL+Page Up. You can also use  “Add results” or  “Reduce results” buttons.

To change search criteria:

• Click  in the Search window or select the Search tab in the Tools>Options.

In the Search dialog specify the type of search:

• Find cards containing all the words typed in the Edit Line ("AND"-search);
• Find cards containing at least one word typed in the Edit Line ("OR"-search). 

Note:

1. If your query contains more than one word, by default the dictionary performs an “AND” search and ignores the word order.
2. When you perform an “AND” search, you can specify a maximum distance between the words in the query and ask the system to match the word order. 
3. When you perform an “OR”, the cards that contain the most words from your query are shown first. Generally, the most relevant results are displayed in the first group of cards.
4. When you perform an "OR" search, the system will ignore function words (prepositions, conjunctions, interjections, personal pronouns, etc.) unless they are found in the same card as at least one non-function word from the query. Cards containing only function words will not be displayed.

ABBYY Lingvo Multilingual Edition can perform full-text searches using either the current language pair or the languages of all the active dictionaries

To perform a full-text search using all the languages of all active dictionaries:

• Type your query word or phrase in the Edit Line and press CTRL+SHIFT+F or choose the Search in All Languages on the Tools menu.