Entering a Concept Search

Concept expansion may be turned on or off by default in your database. You can turn it on by clicking the Concept button on, or precede a word or phrase within your query with a '~' (tilde) character to expand its meaning. If the Concept button is already checked on, you can click it off, or selectively turn it off on a particular word with the '~' (tilde).

The search software has an editable vocabulary of over 250,000 word and phrase associations. Each entry is generally classifiable by either its meaning or part of speech.

The general theory behind our concept search is that in any communication the exact choice of word usage may vary between authors, but the underlying meaning is carried by overlapping domains of commonly shared vocabulary. To compensate for the differing vocabulary between an author and a searcher of the document our software looks for all of the possible combinations of intersecting meanings that are present in the search request.

A good example of this is the intersection of bear and arms . Individually the words have a greatly diverse set of meanings, but together they have only the "carrying weapons" meaning.

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