Reverse search in electronic dictionaries

Abstract

In traditional dictionaries (paper dictionaries, digitized dictionaries, humanreadable dictionaries), we can look for information about a word covering the lemmas included in the nomenclature, usually listed alphabetically. But what happens when we don’t know the word we’re looking for? How can a traditional dictionary help me when I want to know, for example: – What is the name of 20 units box where are sold beer bottles? – What euphemism or politically correct term I can use instead of a dysphemism? – Where do I get information about the verb that combines with the word passeio (‘walk’) to express the sense “to go for a walk”? – etc. If the dictionary only presents that information under the entries grade (‘crate’), the euphemism that you don’t know, or the verb dar (‘give’), I won’t be able to find it, because I don’t know that dar is the word I must use to express that sense (”take a walk” / “to go for a walk”). That’s exactly the information I ignore. But that is what happens in most dictionaries: We found the combination dar um passeio under the entry "dar". The reverse search capabilities transform electronic dictionaries not only in an ideological or conceptual dictionary but also in an encoding dictionary. It allows us to find not only the word that corresponds to an idea (like onomasiological dictionaries), but also which word we can associate to another to express an idea (like encoding dictionaries).