Wild cards add power to search
When you enter words in a search edit box, what you specify is what you will get. Ask for the words "rose" and "moon", and you will see hits that include only those exact words.
Suppose, however, you are looking for more records that carry the idea of roses and moonlight. One way is to place asterisks at the end of words. Try entering rose* moon*. You might get records containing variations such as rose, roses, rosebud, together with one or more of moon, moonbeam, moonbeams, moonshine, and so on.
You can also put an asterisk at the beginning of a word, or at the beginning of a fragment of a word. If you want to get at the idea of thankfulness, try entering *grat*. Results might include gratify, congratulations, ingratitude, gratification, etc. The asterisk stands for any number of letters or digits -- including possibly none. Example: *absen* may yield no words with a prefix, but would still call up variations such as absent, absence, absent-minded.
The question mark may also be used as a wild card, when you know the exact number of characters that you want. Each question mark stands for exactly one character (letter or digit). The expression gr?y calls up gray and grey. You can use both question marks and asterisks in the same term; ??voc* fetches words like advocate, invocation, revocation, etc.
Why another search engine? Here is why.
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