Reverse Dictionary

a dictionary in which the headwords are alphabetically arranged not according to the first letter of a word and proceeding to the last as in ordinary dictionaries, but according to the last letter of a word and proceeding to the first. In a reverse dictionary, for example, the Russian word boroda (“beard”) is entered with other words ending in a and the word stolb (“pole,” “column”) appears with those ending in b. In print, the words are lined up along a right-hand margin. The Russian words for “constraint,” “forcing back,” and “stamping” would therefore be entered:

Reverse dictionaries allow words to be classified according to grammatical features. In a Russian reverse dictionary, for example, all nouns ending in -nie or -enie are grouped together in single series, as are adverbs ending in -o or -e, adjectives ending in -ovyi, and verbs ending in -et’. Reverse dictionaries are compiled for languages (many Indo-European languages, Turkic languages) in which suffixes and endings play a considerably larger role in word-formation than do prefixes.

Reverse dictionaries may be either indexes appended to dictionaries, usually defining dictionaries, or independent dictionaries. Some may contain lists of words or underlying word forms with supplementary information, such as notes on grammar. Reverse dictionaries facilitate research in morphology, phonology, and morphophonemics and are also used in deciphering (for example, in textology) and machine processing of texts.

The first reverse dictionaries were medieval classical Arabic dictionaries of the 13th and 14th centuries. Reverse dictionaries have been known in Europe since the 18th century as rhyming dictionaries. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries the first strictly linguistic reverse dictionaries appeared, mainly for ancient languages (Sanskrit, Ancient Iranian, Latin, Ancient Greek). In the late 1950’s and early 1960’s reverse dictionaries appeared for Russian, Rumanian, Armenian, Italian, English, German, French, Portuguese, and other modern languages.