Goog search?

December 3, 2009 7:02 PM

Can I google search half a word?

There is a French-English dictionary that allows you to search the endings of words by adding a * at the beginning.

Is there a similar way to do this with google searches? If not, is there a French word list online that allows you to search words based on their endings and not only by their alphabetized beginnings?

Thanks!

posted by fantasticninety to Education (6 answers total)

Yes, the * works as a wildcard in Google. You can even use it in the middle of words.
posted by irisclara at 7:09 PM on December 3, 2009

"*" is a wildcard in Google, but it stands in for whole words, not portions of words. I don't think it's possible to do the kind of search you're asking about.
posted by losvedir at 7:16 PM on December 3, 2009

As for the second part of your question: I know that Linux (and OS X) has a file in it that lists all the English words. (On my OS X machine it's /usr/share/dict/words). I imagine a French-localized version of Linux would have an analogous file, but in French. I've been poking around for it online, but haven't had any luck finding it.

Maybe a French mefite running Linux would have this file and could send it to fantasticninety? If not, I can ask my friend to see if his French Ubuntu has it.
posted by losvedir at 7:25 PM on December 3, 2009 [1 favorite]

Years ago you used to be able to search with the embedded * and ? wildcard characters, but not for a long time. Nowadays * is a wildcard for whole search terms only. If you put it inside a search term it's elided as whitespace -- effectively turning your term into two terms or a phrase.

This was the very last reason to keep using Altavista, as I remember -- it was the last search engine to support internal wildcards. [e.g.]

Google does support what they call "stemming" -- it automatically includes similar words, based on its own algorithms. If you search on an English verb ending in ing, for instance, it will actually often return results primarily based on the infinitive form.

(This is one source for a French dictionary file.)
posted by dhartung at 7:38 PM on December 3, 2009

Ah, dhartung found one! I also found the version in Ubuntu, and uploaded it to my website, if you'd like. It's a bit big, but you should be able to download it, and search in it: French word list.
posted by losvedir at 7:46 PM on December 3, 2009

Response by poster: Thanks guys. It looks like my dictionary is still the fastest way to search this. What a shame. I appreciate those two word lists though.

Thanks.
posted by fantasticninety at 5:13 PM on December 4, 2009