Searching; Boolean operators

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Eric

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I wanted to find out what early modern English forms (i.e. KJV English) of the verb "use" are in the KJV. I.e., is there "useth", etc.? (I don't know how to decline this verb in KJV English, I esp. want to know what the past tense would be.)

I did a simple search (F2) and typed "use" (without quotation marks) in the search field. I checked "English stemming" and "Fuzzy searching". I got many responses that included the unrelated word "us". So I thought maybe the Boolean operator ! (NOT) would prevent "us" from being found if I put in "!us" or "! us". I did that and checked "Find verses matching the BOOLEAN EXPRESSION specified". It still gave me "us" hits even when I unchecked "Fuzzy searching". Can someone help me? Thanks!

(I have done other searches and I guess only "useth" is in the KJV, but I still don't know what I did wrong in my search.)
 
Eric said:
I wanted to find out what early modern English forms (i.e. KJV English) of the verb "use" are in the KJV. I.e., is there "useth", etc.? (I don't know how to decline this verb in KJV English, I esp. want to know what the past tense would be.)

I did a simple search (F2) and typed "use" (without quotation marks) in the search field. I checked "English stemming" and "Fuzzy searching". I got many responses that included the unrelated word "us". So I thought maybe the Boolean operator ! (NOT) would prevent "us" from being found if I put in "!us" or "! us". I did that and checked "Find verses matching the BOOLEAN EXPRESSION specified". It still gave me "us" hits even when I unchecked "Fuzzy searching". Can someone help me? Thanks!

(I have done other searches and I guess only "useth" is in the KJV, but I still don't know what I did wrong in my search.)
Click to expand...

The English Stemming function works well but it is algorithmic and does make mistakes.

To get the search to properly exclude "us", use the following search with stemming turned off.

useth= !us

The = symbol tells SwordSearcher to apply stemming to useth, while !us says "don't include us". If you use the English Stemming toggle option in the search dialog, you're telling SwordSearcher to apply stemming reduction to both words, which ends up creating a logic problem in the search and gives unexpected results, because both words are reduced to the same stem.

Hope this helps.
 
Thank you, Brandon. I now see also that you can skip checking the boxes if you use the "modifier tokens" like the exclamation mark.

Regarding my search I found "usest" (only time in Ps 119:132), which is apparently the past tense. I've been searching the web for ways to decline early modern English (KJV English) verbs in the past tense, and can't find anything, so if anyone reading this post finds something, I'd appreciate it. It's not too hard to figure out the present tense, even from use of the KJV in your devotions and Bible study, but the patterns for past tense elude me (maybe because they are simple and obvious to others?!).
 
Eric said:
Thank you, Brandon. I now see also that you can skip checking the boxes if you use the "modifier tokens" like the exclamation mark.

Regarding my search I found "usest" (only time in Ps 119:132), which is apparently the past tense. I've been searching the web for ways to decline early modern English (KJV English) verbs in the past tense, and can't find anything, so if anyone reading this post finds something, I'd appreciate it. It's not too hard to figure out the present tense, even from use of the KJV in your devotions and Bible study, but the patterns for past tense elude me (maybe because they are simple and obvious to others?!).
Click to expand...

Have you tried the Oxford English Dictionary (unabridged)?
 
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