Getting started with Oxford Reference Online

To search for an exact phrase enclose it in double quotes, e.g. "second class citizen".

The wildcard symbol ? can be used in any search to represent a single character. For example, wom?n will find both woman and women.

Use the truncation symbol * to find words beginning with the same stem, e.g. environment* will retrieve environment, environments, environmental etc.

You can use the Boolean operators AND, OR and NOT in the Advanced Search to narrow or broaden your search results.

For example:

Zen AND art will find entries containing both words.
Zen OR art will find entries containing either or both words.
Zen NOT art will find entries containing the word Zen, but will exclude any entries which contain art.

On the Advanced Search pages you can use a Pattern Search to find terms which are spelled similarly. This is useful when you are unsure of the correct spelling of a search term, or where words have multiple spellings (for example, where words have variant forms such as colour and color, edema and oedema).