Wildcard Search

A wildcard search allows you to find words using patterns for a set of words and to find synonyms or forms of a word. You can use wildcards in phrase and proximity searches.

Single Character

The single character wildcard is the question mark ?. Use ? to replace any single character in a term. The ? is a replacement wildcard that is, there must be a character in the wildcard position to register a match.

You can use two or more single character wildcards in the same term, if necessary.

Example Query	Explanation
wom?n	Finds all terms which match the pattern (such as woman or women).
b??k	Finds all four letter words which start with b and end with k (such as book, bilk, or bark).
"advi?e and consent"	Finds all phrases which match the pattern (such as advise and consent or advice and consent).

Multiple Character

The multiple character wildcard is the asterisk (or star) *. Use * to replace 0 or more characters in a term.

You can use two or more multiple character wildcards in the same term, if necessary.

Example Query	Explanation
t*t	Finds all terms which start and end with the letter t (such as tot, that, or target).
work*	Finds all terms which start with the pattern work (such as work, worked, or workhorse).
*ed	Finds all terms which end in ed (such as worked, overloaded, or red).
"edit* content"	Finds all documents which contain phrases which match the pattern (such as editable content or edited content).

Synonym (or Thesaurus)

The synonym wildcard is the dollar sign $. Since $ looks like an S, you can remember that it applies to Synonym searches.

Use $ to find synonyms of a term. You cannot specify usage for the synonym. For example, searching for synonyms of address could find items for both location ("What is your address?") and speech ("He addressed the audience").

Note that the $ must appear at the end of the term and you cannot mix it with any other wildcards in the same term.

Example Query	Explanation
work$	Finds synonyms of the term work (such as toil, effort, or trade).
run$ run%	Finds synonyms of run and word forms of run (word forms are discussed below). Synonym examples include dash, move, or track. Word form examples include run or ran.

Word Form (or Stem)

The word form wildcard is the percentage sign %. Use % to find forms of a term. Word forms are defined by the parts of speech — singular, plural, past tense, present tense, future tense, etc.

You do not need to specify a root word to perform a word form search. A word form search on long (a root word) should produce the same results as a word form search on longer.

Note that the % must appear at the end of the term and you cannot with it any other wildcards in the same term.

Example Query	Explanation
work%	Finds word forms of the term work (such as work, works, or worked).
run%	Finds word forms of the term run (such as ran, runs or running).
"reduce% size"	Finds phrases which use forms of the word reduce (such as reducing or reduced) and the word size.