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View Full Version : Beware of the dictionary!


Edwin
30th January 2006, 08:02 PM
I see a lot of people posting that xyza (4 Kanji letter domain) means something huge like law or school or something like that. Several of the dictionaries out there seem to do "best case" pattern matching - if you read the page VERY carefully you'll spot the difference.

So it will say something like "Search Key: xy (longest match found - original key: xyza)" in the header introductory text - that's only the error message from one dictionary, but several others seem to work similarly. That means that the result you are looking for is for the "xy" part only i.e. the first couple of Kanji.

The same applies for longer words as well, of course - frequently the dictionary only has the first couple of characters because the longer combination you're searching on isn't a common word/phrase.

At $8 a name it's not a disaster either way, but it saves the inevitable adrenaline rush and crash when you think you've got a niche-defining name only to find it's nothing of the sort.

rhys
31st January 2006, 12:40 AM
Yes, great point. I have noticed that tendency with the online dictionaries and nearly made such an error just the other day just about to register a word and thinking, "how could it mean XXXX, but I have never ever heard of that word?"