Introduction to the Regex Dictionary

• What is the Regex Dictionary?
• What does the Regex Dictionary use for a database?
• What are "regexes?"

What is the Regex Dictionary?

The Regex Dictionary is a searchable online dictionary, based on The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 4th edition, that returns matches based on strings —defined here as a series of characters and metacharacters— rather than on whole words, while optionally grouping results by their part of speech. For example, a search for "cat" will return any words that include the string "cat", optionally grouped according to gramatical category:

• Adjectives: catastrophic, delicate, eye-catching, etc.
• Adverbs: marcato, staccato, etc.
• Nouns: scat, category, vacation, etc.
• Verbs: cater, complicate, etc.

In other words, the Regex Dictionary searches for words based on how they are spelled; it can find:

• adjectives ending in ly (197; ex.: homely)
• words ending in the suffix ship (89)
  • Adjectives (1, midship)
  • Nouns (80; ex.: membership)
  • Suffixes (1, -ship)
  • Verbs (6; ex.: worship)
• words, not counting proper nouns, that have six consecutive consonants, including y (79; ex.: strychnine)
• words, not counting proper nouns, that have six consecutive consonants, not counting y (2; ex.: latchstring)
• words of 12 or more letters that consist entirely of alternate consonants and vowels (45; ex.: legitimatize)

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What does the Regex Dictionary use for a database?

Our database has been drawn from The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 4th edition. For the sake of speed and convenience, we have removed many proper names, abbreviations and compound words.

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What are "regexes"?

Regexes are regular expressions, a set of characters, metacharacters, and operators that define a string or group of strings in a search pattern. The Regex Dictionary uses Perl's regular expression syntax (see Perl regular expressions quick start). For more details, see our Step-by-step tutorial.