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"path": "/the-mystery-of-the-backward-index/",
"publishedAt": "2026-05-29T02:11:22.000Z",
"site": "https://www.bespacific.com",
"tags": [
"Education",
"Knowledge Management",
"Libraries"
],
"textContent": "Kottke: “How do dictionary makers keep track of similarly suffixed words, like those ending in -ism, -graphy, -ness, or -ology? With a computer, it’s simple, but how did they do it before the computing age? Starting in the 1950s, lexicographers at Merriam-Webster typed all of the words in the dictionary out backwards and organized them ...",
"title": "The Mystery of the Backward Index"
}