Help talk:Searching

Why does a search for "drier" not pick up "dry"? For that matter, a search for "dry" does not pick up "dry". (This is when I put a search term in the left-hand navigation bar and click "Search".) -- Beland 22:29, 17 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Why can't i search for a word with a particular form or meaning
for example if i were to search "to acquaint" the search engine should also search the definitions of the words in the wiktionary. so then, if you were searching for the action verb, or adjective, or any other form of a word, you would be taken directly to a list of words, one of which you could pick out for youself as the correct word. i think this would dramatically enhance the functionality of the wikipedia
 * At the moment most verbs are listed in the infinitive form, "acquaint" to use your example. Certain conjugated forms also show up, gerunds and adjectival/verb forms especially.  The reason why you cannot search for "aquaints" or "aquainting" is because we haven't gotten that far yet, eventually we hope to have every form of every word defined in a meaningful way.  Until then, we almost always have the infinitive form listed first, and conjugated forms follow sometime after. - TheDaveRoss 09:34, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)

To search by Pinyin
It will be esier to search if Pinyin written in different forms, such as: sky - 天空 (tiānkōng, tian1kong1, tiankong).


 * The other forms are being entered. But they should not all be given in the translations section. --EncycloPetey 22:49, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Is it possible to set by computing program to let the different forms of Pinyin to be equal, such as (tiānkōng = tian1kong1 = tiankong = tian kong)?


 * The best person to ask might be User:A-cai --EncycloPetey 23:06, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

Wildcard searches
Is there any way to search like, for example, *vam and get all the words that end with "vam"?--24.27.9.105 16:20, 13 September 2007 (UTC)


 * I can't think of any way to do it within the MediaWiki software, no. Playing with the XML dump, it is trivial.

Kvam convivam catervam servam furtivam cervam --Connel MacKenzie 17:13, 13 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Is there any plan to implement a wildcard feature? It would be absolutely fantastic, in my humble opinion — currently, the wildcard capabilities of the OED online are the only thing that is stopping me putting more (read: any) energy into Wiktionary.  220.245.245.185 05:19, 14 September 2008 (UTC)


 * this would be a huge help to many of my projects as well which deal with differently spelled word forms of the Middle Ages (mscuthbert on en:wikip)

In fact you can search Wiktionary using wildcards by using Google: Just enter your search "*vam" into Goole followed by the switch „site:“ and the domain „en.wikipedia.org“ (ergo: „site:en.wikipedia.org“). This works with any inexed domain, just don't leave any space between the switch and the domain! 193.158.195.18 12:19, 5 October 2013 (UTC)
 * nope, that doesn't work. Asmrulz (talk) 10:54, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

exact-case search?
The text says:
 * Once on the search page, you can select "Exact-case search" to use the more advanced diacritics-folding option.

.. but I don't see any such option, neither as a checkbox nor in the dropdown of search targets. Hv 12:38, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Appendix:Common short words in the English language
Why is Appendix:Common short words in the English language linked here? --Jackofclubs 14:57, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

Searching syntax
I'm trying to do a search similar to what's possible in Wikipedia, for example: will list articles WITH those keywords but NOT in that category. Here at Wiktionary, this does not seem to work: I also tried: but that gives strange results also. How can I do that kind of search involving categories and exclusion?...Thanks, --Alainr345 (talk) 23:59, 14 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Each page on wiktionary corresponds to a spelling (not a topic) so such searches are not that useful - Java will contain information about Java; reverse lookup of terms (when you know the meaning, and want the word) is very hard, and relies on you typing something approximating our definition. (I don't know why the search configuration on Wikipedia would be different from that here, but Wikipedia gets much more attention from the developpers than Wiktionary does, so maybe they just forgot). Conrad.Irwin 00:45, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

Out of Date
This page is out of date. The search box is now located at the upper right and no longer has Go and Search buttons. I was hoping to find information on how to replicate the "Search" functionality since this box has changed. Who can update this page? —Dajagr 01:04, 23 November 2011 (UTC)


 * I updated it. Sorry it took 11 years to do so, but I was trying to find the perfect wording. GreyishWorm (talk) 16:15, 18 November 2022 (UTC)