Can I search for the letters of a word in Logos?

Kristin · 2025-07-02T14:24:54+00:00

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In Accordance I can take a biblical word and search the lex (Logos lemma), or inflected (Logos lex, I think), or root. However, in Accordance I can also search for "letters." This would mainly be in Hebrew where I am not concerned about if it is even the same word or root, I just want the specific letters, regardless in what words they occur.

Can I do this in Logos as well?

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Accepted answers

Graham Criddle

and the "selection" means "these letters" how it appears, regardless if the letters are associated with different words or even different roots. Is this correct?

Not exactly, the search is still word-based as opposed to letter-based - and I'm going to use the example of English because I don't know how it works in Hebrew. Hopefully someone can clarify.

It is really searching for the word (as opposed to a set of letters). So the first search on the left shows every time that word appears while the one on the right (with Match all forms selected) finds words that are derived from it

But it wouldn't match against a word which had the letters faith following some earlier letters (not that I can think of an example but I hope you get my meaing).

As I say, I don't know how this works out in Hebrew.

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Graham Criddle

You can - using wildcards - but Logos is not optimised for these types of searches and they will take a long time to run

There are more details on wildcard searching here

DMB

There used to discussion of the monster-times needed for wildcards like that. I wonder if they improved the engine-logic.

Kristin

Hi @Graham Criddle,

Thank you for the screenshot. I am not 100% sure if that is what I am trying to do or not, as I think wildcards would include more info, I think?

I can post a screenshot of what I mean in Accordance. I unfortunately can't think of a good example off the top of my head, but hopefully providing a less than optimal example will express the goal though.

So taking "winepress" as an example, if I search the Acc lex (Logos lemma) there is one hit. If I search the root there are significantly more hits, but what I am looking for is all instances where the letters occur, regardless if they are from this root or not.

So if I search the letters I see there are two times this letter combination occurs.

Am I able to do this with what you are describing above?

Hi @DMB, I for sure forget about wildcards. :)

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Graham Criddle

Sorry I misunderstood what you were asking for.

Try right-clicking the word and selecting the top option from the left side of the context menu and running a Bible search on that selection.

Kristin

Hi @Graham Criddle, ok, thanks for clarifying that. I had actually only been using "selection" for blocks of text from extrabiblical books and sort of forgot it might have another function also.

So if I am understanding correctly, the little wheel thing is the lemma, the checkmark is the root, and the "selection" means "these letters" how it appears, regardless if the letters are associated with different words or even different roots. Is this correct?

Graham Criddle

and the "selection" means "these letters" how it appears, regardless if the letters are associated with different words or even different roots. Is this correct?

Not exactly, the search is still word-based as opposed to letter-based - and I'm going to use the example of English because I don't know how it works in Hebrew. Hopefully someone can clarify.

But it wouldn't match against a word which had the letters faith following some earlier letters (not that I can think of an example but I hope you get my meaing).

As I say, I don't know how this works out in Hebrew.

Kristin

Hi @Graham Criddle,

Ok, thanks for clarifying that, and I just tried it like you said and I can confirm it did work in Hebrew. :) I finally thought of a better example of Hagar, so I ran her name and with "match all forms" selected it found other words with the same letters. When I deselected "match all forms" it found only Hagar.

Thank you for your help!

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